(9/20) Tyler's Row (5 page)

'That sitting-room of yours wants bottoming,' said Mrs Pringle dourly. This, construed, meant that a thorough spring-cleaning was considered necessary.

'Looks all right to me,' I replied, quailing inwardly. Mrs Pringle, bottoming anything, is one of the major forces of nature, something between a volcano and a hurricane, and certainly frightening and uncomfortable.

'Seems to me you just lays a duster round when you feel like it. That side table's a fair disgrace, all over hot rings where you've put down your cup, and ink spots no honest woman could get off.'

'Well, I sometimes—' I began, but was swept aside. The hurricane was gaining force nicely.

'Mrs Hope, poor soul that she was, was a stickler for doing the furniture right. Every piece was gone over once a week with a nice piece of soft cloth wrung out in warm water and vinegar.'

When Mrs Hope's example is invoked I know that I may as well give in. She lived in the school house many years ago. Her husband is remembered as an unsuccessful poet who drowned his sorrows in drink, and was finally asked to leave. But Mrs Hope has left behind her a reputation for cleanliness as fierce and unremitting as Mrs Pringle's own.

'Mrs Hope didn't have to teach all day,' I said, putting up a poor defence.

'Mrs Hope,'
boomed Mrs Pringle, 'would have kept her place clean
AND
taut! Nothing slipshod about Mrs Hope.'

'You win,' I said resignedly. 'Shall I make coffee now?'

Mrs Pringle inclined her head graciously.

'And put it on a tray. I've enough marks to rub orf the table as it is.'

Over coffee, she told me the news.

'Mrs Mawne put her foot down, so I hear. Never liked the idea of moving so Mrs Willet said. Her sister was doing a bit of ewfolstery for her—'

'A bit of
what?'

'Ewfolstery. Covering chairs, and couches and such-like. Well, as I was saying, Mrs Mawne told her plain that they had looked at Tyler's Row and decided against it.
She'd
decided, she meant! Anyone could see the poor old gent would have loved it.'

'So it's on the market still?'

Mrs Pringle swelled with the gratified pride of one about to impart secret knowledge.

'I've been told—by One Who Should Know—that Mr Hale from the Grammar School's having it.'

'Probably just rumour,' I said off-handedly. A cunning move this, to learn more, but I still smarted under the threat of being bottomed.

Mrs Pringle rose to the bait beautifully. Her wattles turned red, and wobbled with all the fury of an enraged turkey-cock.

'My John's sister-in-law cleans at Masters and Jones and she's seen Mr Hale in and out of that place like a whirligig! And what's more, he's been to Tyler's Row hisself nigh on half-a-dozen times in the last fortnight, fair bristling with foot-rules and pencils and papers. He's having it all right, mark my words!'

'Well, well! We'll have to wait and see, won't we?' I said, with just a nice touch of disbelief. 'Anyway, he'd be a pleasant neighbour.'

'Respectable
,' agreed Mrs Pringle, accepting a second Garibaldi biscuit graciously. 'Friendly, too, they say. Though he fair lays about those boys, from what my nephew says, if they don't work.'

'I'm glad to hear it,' I said. 'He sounds a man after my own heart. When's he coming?'

'You tell me!' replied Mrs Pringle emphatically. 'He's got an architect
and
a builder, so between 'em both that'll hold things up. The architect was out doin' what Mr Willet tells me is a survey, though he saw young Masters doing one too, a week or so back. Shows he's serious, doesn't it? Having two people to look at it, I mean?'

She dusted a crumb or two from her massive bosom, and rose to continue her labours.

'If he's in by next spring, he'll be lucky,' she foretold gloomily. 'And then I wish him joy of his neighbours, poor soul.'

I must confess that the future of Tyler's Row did not concern me greatly, although I have as keen an interest in village affairs, I think, as most people in Fairacre.

But I had troubles of my own at this time. As well as the intimidating prospect of Mrs Pringle's bottoming in the near future, I was also threatened with the formation of a Parent-Teacher Association at Fairacre School.

For generations any association between parents and teachers has been a natural one—sometimes enthusiastically co-operative, sometimes acrimonious, according to circumstances. But always it has been of an informal type—and it has worked very well.

I don't mind admitting that I am a non-committee woman. The very sight of an agenda fills me with dreadful boredom, and all that jargon about 'delegating authority to a subcommittee', and 'forwarding resolutions' to this and that, renders me numb and vague. The thought of an association which met once a month and involved speakers and demonstrations, and general sociability, filled me with depression. It would mean yet another evening away from my snug ¿reside, sitting in the draughty schoolroom and acting as reluctant hostess to a bevy of parents whom I saw quite enough of, in any case.

The moving force behind this sudden activity was a newcomer to the village, Mrs Johnson. The family had moved into a cottage in the village street once occupied by a lovable slattern called Mrs Emery and her family. Mr Emery had worked at an establishment, some miles away, known to us as 'the Atomic'. Mr Johnson also worked there, and was a somewhat pompous young man of left-ish tendencies, who had some difficulty in finding cruel masters grinding the faces of the poor, but lived in hope.

His wife, rather more militant, held strong views on education. She brought three young sons to the school soon after the summer term started. They were pale, bespectacled children, fiercely articulate, in contrast to my normal placid pupils, but quite amenable and keen to work. We got on very well.

But their mother was a sore trial. She met them at the school gate every afternoon, and button-holed me. I was subjected to tirades of information—usually faulty—on such topics as the dangers of formal teaching, the necessity for monthly intelligence tests, absolute freedom of thought, word and deed for each child and, of course, the complete rebuilding of Fairacre school.

There are very few teachers who welcome this sort of thing at four o'clock in the afternoon after a hard day's teaching. My civility soon grew thin, and I was obliged to tell her that any complaints must be dealt with at an appointed time. After this, I had fewer face-to-face encounters at the gate, but a number of letters, badly typed on flimsy paper and running to three or four pages, setting forth half-baked theories on education bearing no relevance, that I could see, upon present circumstances.

Unfortunately, Mrs Johnson and Mrs Mawne became close friends, and Mrs Mawne is one of the school's managers.

Whether she was still smarting from the wounds inflicted in the battle of Tyler's Row, from which she had emerged the victor, I shall never know. But certainly, soon after Mrs Pringle's conversation, the pressure for the formation of a Parent-Teacher Association was intensified. The vicar, who is chairman of the managers, mentioned the matter on several occasions.

'I really think it is unnecessary,' I told him, yet again. 'Fairacre's managed very well without one, and it's going to be a real headache finding something to do regularly every month, or whenever it is proposed to meet. If I felt that the majority of parents wanted it, then I'd submit with good grace, but I feel sure Mrs Johnson's at the bottom of this, and I don't suppose that family will stay in the village any longer than the Emerys did. I give them two years at the most.'

The poor vicar looked unhappy.

'We have a managers' meeting tomorrow, and this is one of the matters to be discussed, as you know.'

I did not, as a matter of fact, as the notice had been thrust, unread, behind the clock on the mantelpiece from whence I should snatch it one minute before the meeting.

'Do consider it, my dear Miss Read,' said the vicar, his kind old face puckered with anxiety. 'And what does Mrs Bonny think about it?'

I realised, with a shock, that I had never even thought of consulting Mrs Bonny, the infants' teacher, about this possibility. This was remiss of me, and I must put the matter right without delay.

When the vicar had gone, his cloak swirling in the fresh summer breeze from the downs, I made my way to the infants' room where Mrs Bonny was walking among her charges' desks, admiring plasticine baskets of fruit, crayoned portraits of each other, notable for rows of teeth like piano keys, and inordinately long necklaces of wooden beads which trailed over the desks like exotic knobbly snakes. It was a peaceful scene, and Mrs Bonny, a plump pink widow in her fifties, added to the air of cosiness.

'Very nice,' I said, to an upheld blue banana.

'Beautiful,' I said, to a picture executed by one of the Coggs' twins, showing her sister with one mauve eye, one yellow, and a mop of what appeared to be scarlet steel wool at the top of the portrait.

By this time, every piece of work in the room was raised for my inspection and approval.

'Wonderful! Very good effort! Lovely beads! Neat work! You have tried hard!'

The comments rattled out as evenly as peas from a shooter. Then I clapped my hands, and told them to continue.

'Sweets for quiet workers,' I added, resorting to a little bribery.

'The vicar's been talking about this idea of a Parent-Teacher Association,' I began to Mrs Bonny.

A bright smile lit her face.

'It's a marvellous idea, isn't it?' she said enthusiastically, and I felt my spirits sink. 'All the Caxley Schools seem to have them, and the parents are wonderful—always raising money for things, and in and out of the school, helping, you know.'

My face must have registered my misgivings, for she gazed at me anxiously.

'You don't think it would work here?' she queried. There was a pause whilst she darted to the front row and ran an expert finger round the inside of a child's mouth and removed a wet red bead.

'That would
hurt
if you swallowed it,' she said sternly. 'And what's more,' she added practically, 'we're very short of beads.'

She turned to me.

'Sorry, Miss Read. What's your objection to a P.T.A.?'

I told her, somewhat lamely, I felt. It was quite apparent that she was strongly in favour of setting up one, and I could see I was going to be heavily outnumbered.

'I think you would find it a great help,' she assured me. 'I'd welcome it myself.'

She stopped suddenly, and her pink face grew pinker.

'But there—I might not be here to enjoy it,' she said, looking confused.

Novelists talk about a cold hand gripping their heroine's heart. Two cold ones gripped mine, and fairly twisted it into oblivion. The thought of losing Mrs Bonny and all that that entailed—the succession of 'supply' teachers, if any, or, much more likely, the squashing of the whole school into my classroom for me to instruct for some dreadful interminable period, froze my blood. It has happened so often before, and every time, it seems, is more appalling than the last.

'Mrs Bonny,' I said, in a voice cracked with apprehension, 'what do you mean?'

She rearranged her pearls self-consciously, slewing them round with energetic jerks to get the clasp tidily at the nape of her neck.

'I was going to tell you on Friday,' said Mrs Bonny. To give me time, I thought despairingly, to recover from the news during the weekend.

'I am getting married again. In the Christmas holidays, in fact.'

I professed myself delighted, and waited for a bolt from heaven to strike me dead.

'A friend of my husband's,' she said, warming to her theme. 'He's always been so close to our family. In fact, he's godfather to my boy.'

'Well, he's jolly lucky,' I said, and meant it, stopping a string of beads which a boy was whirling round and round in a dangerous circle, and getting a bruised hand in the process. The occupational hazards of an infants' teacher are something which would surprise the general public, if explained.

'I don't want to give up teaching, at least for some time. We want to save as much money as we can for when we retire. Anyway, I should miss the children terribly.'

'That's a relief,' I told her.

'We thought we'd see how things go. Theo says that if I find it too much, then I must stop, of course. But I shall stay as long as I can.'

'Let's hope it's for years,' I said.

'So you see,' concluded Mrs Bonny happily, 'although I think the P.T.A. is a marvellous idea—and I think you will too, if it happens, Miss Read—I won't press you one way or the other, because it won't really affect me, will it?'

'No,' I said morosely. 'I quite see that.'

I renewed my congratulations, smiled brightly upon the infants, and returned to my own classroom.

There I found that the children had put away their work, books had been stacked neatly on the cupboard, the large hymn-book had been propped upon the ancient piano in readiness for the next morning's prayers, and all that the class awaited was the word to go home.

Certainly, the clock's hands were at five to four, but I felt slightly nettled at such officious time-keeping. The children, however, arms folded, stout country boots neatly side by side, were so pleased with their efforts that I had not the heart—broken-spirited woman that I was—to chide them.