Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis (16 page)

In the winter the desks were dragged forward nearer the blazing fire, and the children ate their meal with one eye on a large kettle which lodged on a trivet. Dolly and Emily made cocoa for them all, ladling a spoonful into the cups brought from home and adding a wobbly stream of boiling water from the heavy kettle. There was no charge for this, for years before, in the bitter winter of 1881, the managers had decided to provide this beverage from their own purses, and the kindly custom continued. A jug of milk was sent over daily from the farm near the church, and brown sugar was kept in a great black and gold tin which had come from China years before, to find an alien home at Fairacre. For many of the children the cocoa was the most nourishing part of their meal, for times were still hard for the agricultural labourer, and bread formed the major part of the contents of the school satchels, Dolly noticed.

School began at nine, and ended at four, so that for most of the year Dolly and Emily cycled home in the light. Only at the end of the Christmas term and the early part of the Spring one, when the oil lamps were lit from a long taper and shed meagre pools of light upon the children's heads below, were Dolly and Emily obliged to fix lamps to their bicycles and pedal through the dark lane behind the two wavering beams.

Dolly found the work absorbing. By nature she was methodical, cool-headed and patient. The children responded to her quiet ways with trust and affection. But it was for Emily that they showed most enthusiasm. Her quick wits, her humour, and her ready laugh made the children too excitable for Mr Wardle and Miss Taylor's liking. When Emily took a class into the playground to play 'Cat and Mouse' or 'Poor Jenny Sits A-Weeping', the shrieks would penetrate the stout schoolroom walls, and Mr Wardle, intercepting sly grins among his pupils, would stalk forth to call for stricter discipline outside.

'Ticked off again!' Emily would sigh, as they cycled home. 'I wish I could keep them as quiet as you do, Dolly.'

'They can do with livening up,' answered Dolly. 'I think they're kept a bit too meek indoors, and then they get wild as soon as they get outside. But, there you are, that's how Mr Wardle wants it, so we must do as we're told.'

'But just wait till we're headmistresses!' laughed Emily. 'We can do as we like then with the children.'

The possibility seemed so remote to the two young girls that they treated it with amusement. They might teach for a few years, they supposed, and enjoy it very much, but marriage, they felt sure, would one day claim them—marriage to someone as yet unknown, for all the known young men were far too familiar and dull to consider—and then another way of life would begin for them.

And so, happy in the present, and with vague and happy dreams of the future, Emily and Dolly passed the years of their pupil teaching in the long golden afternoon of Edward's
reign, with never a thought of the shadows of war which crept slowly but inexorably nearer to their small bright world.

One June evening, about this time, Dolly came out alone from the evening institute in Caxley High Street. Emily was at home with a feverish cold. As she mounted her bicycle she caught sight of Ada in the distance, strolling some way ahead, on the arm of a thickset young man.

Dolly had heard Ada say that morning that she would be late home all the week as they were getting stock sorted ready for the summer sales. Had she finished, Dolly wondered, or had the task been fictitious?

The couple progressed slowly. They were deeply engrossed, and Dolly pedalled equally slowly to keep behind them. There was a look on Ada's face which she had never seen there before. It was a dumb, adoring look, quite unlike the bold flirtatious glances with which Dolly was familiar. The young man's arm crept round Ada's waist and they turned down a side lane towards the river.

Dolly trundled home much perturbed. She had recognised the young man, as he turned, as the son of a local publican. Though the father was respected, it was general knowledge that he had hopelessly spoilt his only child who was allowed too much money and too much licence. Harry Roper, thought the youthful Dolly, must be quite old—twenty-five at least—and Ada knew, as well as she did, that there were dozens of pretty girls, in Caxley alone, who had been as besotted as Ada now was, and who later had regretted their infatuation.

Cycling along the warm lane, with her eyes half-shut against the clouds of gnats, Dolly pondered. It was unlike Ada to lie to her mother. Then again, it was unlike Ada to be so secretive about her escorts. This affair was obviously more serious than the others, and Dolly did not like it.

She decided to say nothing to her parents, nor to Ada. But she was uncomfortably guilty that evening in her parents' presence, and glad to escape early to bed. There she lay, anxious for Ada's safe return, but it was past eleven o'clock before the girl crept upstairs, and by that time Dolly was sound asleep.

This escapade had its sequel, for the next day Francis met a friend who had been in Caxley the night before.

'Saw your girl last night,' he said brightly, his face alight with the pleasure of tale-telling.

'Oh yes,' answered Francis, observing the note of happy anticipation. 'She'd been to evening class.'

'Not this one hadn't!' asserted the friend inelegandy. 'Behind the bar of "The Crown" she was, and served me with a pint, too.'

Francis was completely taken aback, but with a countryman's caution did his best not to show it.

'I must be getting along,' he said, collecting his thatching shears and making towards the ladder.

''Bye,' said the other, setting off in the other direction, well pleased with the encounter.

Francis watched him go, and leant back against the ladder to consider this unsavoury piece of news. He was shocked by more than one aspect of it. In the first place, it looked as though Ada had deliberately lied about staying late for the sale. It also seemed that she was mixed up in company of which he had no knowledge. But worse still was the thought that she had appeared openly in a public bar. This hurt Francis deeply. She had disgraced them all.

Francis liked his pint now and again, and enjoyed his local pub, but at a time when drunkenness was rife and the wretched results were everywhere around, the idea of women, and particularly his own young daughters, being seen in a public house, was horrifying. His parents had been strict teetotallers, and he had been brought up to consider public houses as dens of depravity. If word of Ada's escapade ever reached her grandparents, it would be the end of them!

And what was the publican thinking of, to let a young girl serve in his bar? Francis grew belligerent at the thought, and found himself snapping the shears viciously.

'Best get on with my work,' he said aloud to a prowling cat. 'But I'll have a word with that young lady tonight. Maybe I'm too soft with her.'

He mounted the ladder and attacked the straw with unusual savagery.

Ada did not trouble to deny anything. She was in a hard, bold mood, offhand and insolent, calculated to send her parents into a frenzy. Dolly, cleaning her shoes in the kitchen, trembled for her sister. Mary was torn between tears and an overpowering desire to box the girl's ears, but Francis handled the affair competently.

'What's wrong with bringing the young man here?' asked Francis. 'If you like him well enough, let's see him. He'll come if he thinks anything of you.'

'Everyone's against him,' protested Ada, 'and you're the same. You haven't even seen him but you tell me I oughtn't to go out with him. And I don't see why I can't go to his home. He can't help living in a pub.'

'He don't live in the public bar,' said Francis shortly, 'and that's where you were—and serving too. His father could get into serious trouble for that, and he knows it.'

Ada's face flamed scarlet.

'I hates this place! Full of a lot of tittle-tattlers with nothing better to do than make trouble! But they shan't stop me seeing him—and neither will you!'

Francis kept his temper with difficulty.

'See here, Ada. I'm your father and I must do the right thing by my own daughter. You're young yet—'

'I'm nearly nineteen,' Ada burst in, 'and he's twenty-five, and we're going to be married as soon as we can.'

There was silence for a moment in the little room, then Francis spoke gently.

'I'd like to have heard about that from him first. The sooner I see this young man the better, I reckons, and his dad, too.'

'You don't understand—' began Ada, with a wail.

'Your mother and me has both been in love, you know,' commented Francis dryly. 'We don't want it explained to us. All we're saying is: don't do nothing in a hurry. If you've got any sense at all you'll keep away from him for a bit until I've seen him.'

'Oh, you
old
people!' expostulated Ada, flinging out of the room. Dolly heard the thud of her feet on the stairs and the creak of the bed as she flung herself upon it.

Francis and Mary exchanged hopeless looks.

'Well,' said Francis heavily, 'I'll go and thin my carrots. Need a bit of fresh air after that. Let her simmer a bit, my dear, and then you see what you can do with her. Proper headstrong hussy she's getting!'

'She always was,' said Mary candidly, to her husband's departing back.

The next day Francis made his way to 'The Crown' to see the publican. He did not relish the interview, but it had to be faced, and a steady anger helped his determination. He found his anger evaporating, as the meeting lengthened.

Mr Roper knew nothing, he said, of Ada, although he had seen his son with a girl in the parlour. His wife was about at the
time, and he himself was busy with a party of travellers. He had been obliged to go into the yard to arrange stabling for their horses and had knocked on the parlour window and told Harry to attend to the bar. He was as upset as Francis to hear the news, he said; and Francis believed him.

They talked straightforwardly of the affair, and agreed to speak to their children again. If marriage was what they wanted, then Harry would call upon Francis at once.

'But if he's lukewarm,' said Francis honestly, 'you can warn him off. I'm in no mind to lose our Ada anyway, and she'll have plenty of choice.'

They parted civilly, and Francis returned to Beech Green with a more contented mind.

But for Dolly, this family row had particular significance. On the fateful night when the storm had broken Dolly crept to bed, praying that Ada would be asleep or content to he silent. She herself was in such a turmoil of doubts and fears that she craved nothing but the unconsciousness of sleep.

But Ada was awake and in an ugly mood. She lay in bed watching Dolly undress by the light of a candle.

'I suppose you're glad I've been found out?' she said, speaking low so that their parents would hear nothing through the thin wall which divided the two rooms.

'Ada!' cried Dolly, cut to the quick.

'Ada!' mimicked her sister in a spiteful squeak. 'You know you were watching us—sneaking along on your bike! I saw you!'

'I couldn't help it—' began poor Dolly.

'And I bet you told mum as soon as you got home, that I wasn't sorting stock. Wanting to make me out a liar.'

'And are you?' asked Dolly, with a flash of spirit.

'Yes, I am then,' said Ada defiantly. 'You're driven to it in this mean rotten place. And I don't care! When you're in love you'll do anything!'

Dolly was shocked into silence. With trembling hands she hung the last of her clothes on the back of the chair, blew out the candle, and slid into her cold bed. The dreadful words beat in her brain—words all the more sinister from their sibilant whispering. 'When you're in love you'll do anything!' Lie to your parents? Shout abuse at them? Attack your sister with false accusations? Was this what love did to you?

She remembered Mr Waterman reading poems about love to his callous young pupils. Surely he had told them that love was ennobling and fired people with all that was good and beautiful? Love had not done that to Ada, it seemed.

She summoned all the courage and calm she could, amidst the tumult and the darkness, and spoke pleadingly.

'Ada, you don't really mean that. You're just upset. Try to go to sleep.'

Ada gave a hard, harsh laugh. It sounded like the cackle of a jay in the dark room, and it sent shivers down Dolly's spine.

'Don't you soft-soap me! You're a sneak, and I know it. And I mean every word I say. What do you know about being in love, anyway? You only got me into trouble because you're jealous—and that's the honest truth, Dolly Clare!'

The vicious whispering ceased as Ada thumped over towards the wall. Exhausted with emotion she fell asleep almost immediately, but Dolly lay, appalled and icily awake, until the dawn came.

During that long terrible night she came to realise that the rift which had been widening so steadily between Ada and herself was now too wide for any successful bridge. Gone were the days when Ada was always right, when Ada led and she followed, and when Ada—the bright, the beautiful, the brave—could count on her adoration and obedience.

Nothing would ever be quite the same again. The words had been said, the cruel blows given. Dolly felt that even if she could come at last to forgive, she could certainly never forget.

She fell into sleep as the cocks began to crow, and woke, two hours later, leaden-eyed, to a world which had lost some of its brightness for ever.

L
OOKING
back across the years, as she lay half-dozing in the sunny garden, old Miss Clare marvelled that she should remember that wretched night so clearly. Was it true, she wondered, that she had been jealous of Ada's popularity with the young men? She had not realised it at the time. She had been furious and severely shaken by Ada's spite. But was there an element of truth there which the youthful Dolly unconsciously recognised?

Certainly her interest in boys was remarkably small at that time, Miss Clare remembered, and smiled to think of her first 'walking out', which occurred a little before Ada's escapade.

It was, not surprisingly, with Emily's brother Albert. He was now a corporal and a very fine figure in uniform.