The Carpenter's Children

It was time to get ready for church, and Mrs Munday was bustling around the children, glancing frequently at the clock on the mantelpiece.

‘Ernest! Do stop mooning around and do up Grace’s buttons for her – and keep still for your brother, Grace. Aren’t you wearing your hat with the brown silk bow, Isabel? It matches your frock better than the straw one with the daisies – oh, all right then, as it’s a nice sunny morning.’

She called up the stairs to her husband, ‘Tom? Don’t forget to put a clean white handkerchief in your top pocket.’

Thomas Munday shouted back, ‘Yes, Vi – soon as I’ve got my trousers on!’

‘What? D’you mean to say you haven’t… Oh, go away with you, Tom, and stop your nonsense,’
she scolded as he came downstairs grinning. ‘It’s bad enough trying to get the children looking decent for church – you’re the worst of the lot!’ But her voice softened as she spoke, for the couple understood each other well after thirteen years of marriage. Tom knew how much she liked to impress their neighbours in Pretoria Road when the five of them walked to St Peter’s on Sunday mornings. She stabbed a long pin through her wide-brimmed hat, pinning it deftly to the knot of hair on the top of her head and they left the house, a typically happy family picture, or so Violet Munday liked to think they appeared.

St Peter’s was the ancient parish church of North Camp, named for a Roman settlement which had once occupied the site on the Hampshire-Surrey border and pre-dated the nearby town of Everham. Once within its thick stone walls, Mrs Munday took note of who else was there. Silver-haired Canon Harrington would be in the vestry preparing to take the service, and there was Lady Neville of Hassett Manor, with her younger son, Cedric, and her unmarried daughter, Miss Neville, sitting in their usual front pew. Sir Arnold Neville and the elder son were in the diplomatic service, currently attached to the Viceroy of India. Looking around, Mrs Munday noted the Birds with their younger son, Ted, the same age as Ernest, and the daughter, Phyllis, one of Isabel’s friends. The elder boy, Tim, must have gone out with his cycling club, she thought, but
Ted still had to obey his parents. Mr Bird was a tailor, though called himself a gentlemen’s outfitter, and was also a churchwarden. Then there were the Lansdownes who owned and ran a dairy with a shop attached; they collected milk from local farmers and distributed it either in bottles or straight from the churn into the customer’s jug. Their daughter Rosie was another of Isabel’s classmates at Miss Daniells’ school. And over there were the Goddards who ran Thomas and Gibson’s haberdashery for old Miss Gibson, with their daughter Betty and son Sidney. There was no sign of the Coopers, which was hardly surprising, considering that woman’s notoriety as a drunkard, though Mrs Munday told herself not to be uncharitable, but to bask in the satisfaction of being the only family here, apart from the professionals, who were not shopkeepers. Her Thomas was a self-employed carpenter, always in demand for the high quality of his workmanship; he had even been called in by the churchwardens to inspect and advise about the woodworm in one of the choir stalls at St Peter’s, with the result that he had been entrusted with removing all the infected wood and replacing it with sound, seasoned oak. That meant of course that he had had to copy the decorative carving of the other choir stalls so that it matched them. Canon Harrington had given him high praise, and said it was impossible to tell the new from the medieval.

That’s what distinguishes Tom from any jobbing
carpenter, thought his wife, for he had served his seven years’ apprenticeship and was a master of his craft; even so, he was still looked upon as a tradesman, socially inferior to the clergy and the doctor. Violet Munday wondered if ten-year-old Ernest would follow his father’s craft or go in for something of a more official nature, a junior clerk in a bank or solicitors’ office; both would offer him the prospect of eventually passing the relevant examinations to become at least an assistant bank manager or junior partner in a legal firm. He was a quiet, thoughtful boy who needed to put himself forward more, thought his mother fondly; in September he would start as a pupil at Everham Council School, four miles away from North Camp, and five-year-old Grace would begin her schooling at Miss Daniells’ Infants attached to St Peter’s Church, where Isabel was now in the third form, a pretty girl with her father’s blue eyes and straight brown hair hanging in a single plait down her back. It was Violet’s dream that Isabel would one day become a teacher; meanwhile she frowned and shook her head at dark-eyed little Grace who was trying to attract her father’s attention. Grace would do well at school, her mother was sure of it, and perhaps Miss Daniells would be able to curb that temper of hers; Grace could be very naughty when she failed to get her own way.

Morning worship proceeded and they stood, sat or knelt according to the liturgy. During the third
hymn a collection was taken and Canon Harrington, in his white surplice and embroidered stole, climbed with some difficulty into the pulpit. His sermon was largely addressed to the children in the congregation, and Mrs Munday’s thoughts were soon interrupted by a tiresome whispering, rustling and fidgeting among those very children, most disrespectful to the good old canon, she thought, although admittedly he was inclined to ramble, and Mrs Munday herself had lost the thread of his discourse. This would not do, she told herself, and straightened her back in the pew with her hands in her lap, to concentrate on the sermon and encourage Isabel and Grace to do likewise. There were some parishioners who argued that it would be better if Sunday School was held concurrently with Morning Worship instead of at the Jubilee Institute on Sunday afternoons, for which Isabel and little Grace would have to get dressed up again after their midday roast dinner, while Ernest would join the boys at the Bible study group held at the home of Mr and Mrs Woodman who were very ‘evangelical’.

Thomas Munday glanced at Ernest who, though sitting still, was clearly not listening to the canon. That boy’s a dreamer, thought his father, and should have been sent to the council school a year ago; it was high time he left that dame school and walked the four miles each way to Everham. It had been Violet’s idea to send the children to Miss Daniells
for the first five years because of its convenience and good reputation. Half a crown a week was not unreasonable and Tom Munday thought it ideal for the girls, but Ernest needed the discipline of rubbing along with older children. Tom had tried to teach him the basics of working with wood, but he doubted that the boy would follow the trade of his father and grandfather. Too booky!

He turned his attention to the sermon. Poor old Harrington was becoming as forgetful as he was deaf, and really wasn’t fit to continue as priest-in-charge at St Peter’s, but he had been the incumbent for as long as anybody in North Camp could remember, while curates had come and gone. Tom Munday had been doing some carpentry at the rectory, making two separate commodes disguised as ornamental cabinets for the canon and Mrs Harrington. She, poor old soul, had lapsed into senility, and in Tom’s opinion the old man was going the same way. What on earth was he saying now?

‘I’m sure that all you good children know how fortunate you are to be living in Great Britain,’ boomed the canon. ‘Our country stands at the head of the greatest empire the world has ever known, and our beloved king and queen, anointed by God to rule over it, have every right to expect our complete allegiance.’

Our beloved King Edward thinks more about horse racing and chasing pretty women by what I’ve
heard, thought Tom Munday with a faint grin as he listened.

‘And just as we must show loyalty and obedience to those set in authority over us, so must you good children show the same respect to your parents,’ went on the canon. ‘For example, I’m sure that you always stand up when your father or mother come into a room where you are idly sitting.’

Isabel Munday caught her father’s smile. ‘
We
don’t, do we, Daddy?’ she whispered, and was immediately shushed by her mother. Even so, a ripple of surprised amusement passed over the congregation, and Tom grinned back at his eight-year-old daughter. How sweet his little girls looked in their wide hats and white pinafores over their Sunday frocks; Grace was already a dark-eyed charmer, and Tom remembered with pride how they’d all gone to St Peter’s for a special service on the day of Queen Victoria’s funeral three years ago, just as her subjects all over the country had done. Everybody had been expected to wear black, but Grace had been less than two years old, and Violet had settled for pale mauve dresses for both girls. Tom thought they had stood out from the black-clad gloom and bitterly cold weather like a pair of pretty spring crocuses. What a time of national mourning that had been, and it had nearly been followed by another royal funeral, for the new king had almost died of appendicitis and his coronation had had to be postponed for two months. 

Canon Harrington was now leaning over the side of the pulpit and shaking a forefinger at the front pews, which included Lady Neville and her son and daughter.

‘I call upon you all – all you subjects of our king and emperor, all of you in our overseas dominions and colonies – I call upon you all – call you one and all – all of you, all, all—’

And with this incoherent exhortation, the canon slumped over the side of the pulpit, his face contorted, his eyes staring, mouth gaping.

A gasp rose from the congregation and many rose to their feet.

‘A doctor! Is there a doctor here?’ called churchwarden Mr Bird. ‘Dr Stringer – is he here?’

The local general practitioner came forward hastily, and with the help of some adult choristers lifted the inert, unwieldy body and set it down on the carpeted chancel floor.

Mrs Munday prodded her husband’s side. ‘You’d better go up and see if there’s anything you can do,’ she said, thoroughly shaken by the canon’s dramatic collapse in front of his parishioners.

‘I reckon there’s enough o’ them up there,’ he replied quickly. ‘No, you take the children home and I’ll follow when they’ve decided what to do with him. They could use Lady Neville’s carriage to take him over to the rectory, it’s only across the way.’

‘Ought we all to join together in a prayer for
the poor canon?’ she asked rather helplessly.

‘That depends on whether anybody’s willing to stand up and lead the rest, and I can’t see Bird doing that, can you? Oh look, there’s old Woodman, he’ll take charge of any praying to be done, but they’d better get the poor old chap out o’ the church first. Go on, Violet, take the children home, there’s nothing here for them to see.’

Tom Munday rarely gave an order, but when he did, his wife and children invariably obeyed.

The year was passing and it had been a beautiful summer. September came in with continued warm sunshine, and Mrs Munday said it was a continuation of August except for the days getting shorter. Walking to school along country lanes with berried hedgerows on each side and by footpaths through the fields, Ernest Munday thought September’s mellow glow quite different from the blaze of high summer. Whatever the season, it was always Ernest’s favourite until the next one followed, but this September was different, for it marked a great change in his life. He had reluctantly said goodbye to Miss Daniells and must now make his way to Everham and back each day, to join his class of ten- and eleven-year-old boys and girls. Most of them had come up from Everham Infants, a separate but adjoining building, to the Big School, as it was known, where the minimum leaving age was fourteen, though the headmaster
Mr Chisman encouraged the brighter pupils to stay another year if they were not needed to start earning to augment their families’ incomes. Here Ernest mixed with a variety of children who lived in and around Everham, villages like North and South Camp and Hassett. Everham boasted two churches, Anglican and Methodist, and a whole high street of shops. It also had a hospital with twenty beds where local general practitioners carried out minor operations and delivered a few babies from mothers who had been sent in with complications. A handful of medical cases, mostly elderly, with failing hearts or inoperable growths, languished in the rest of the beds, though if nothing more could be done for them their relatives were expected to care for them at home, to make room for new admissions.

The stark brick walls of Everham Council School loomed above Ernest as he joined the others going through the boys’ entrance and down the corridor to their cloakroom. He had at first expected to walk to school with Tim and Ted Bird, but they had spent only two years at Miss Daniells’ before joining the infants’ school at Everham. Ted, the younger and the same age as Ernest, was now also a beginner at the Big School, but was one of a group of boys he had already got to know, and Ernest preferred to walk alone than to be constantly teased by Ted’s mates. Likewise Sidney Goddard avoided Ernest in case he got ridiculed by association, though Betty Goddard
and Isabel were friends, and in another two years would follow their brothers to the council school.

‘Hey, look who’s here, it’s our friend Fuzzy!’ shouted a boy, for Ernest’s curly hair had earned him the nickname.

‘Yeah,’ grinned another. ‘Ol’ clever clogs Munday goes to pray on Sunday – oh, haven’t you
met
Miss Daniells’
pet
?’

Ernest ignored the jeers, for to answer back would lead to further confrontation, and to cry would be a disaster; he hung his cap on its hook and went to join the whole school in the assembly hall. Mr Chisman led them in Our Father, then read a few prayers for the school, the nation and the British Empire; they sang a hymn, accompanied on the piano by a lady teacher, and then were dismissed to their various classes where boys and girls studied arithmetic, English grammar, history and geography together in the mornings, and after their packed lunches they separated, the girls to cookery and needlework lessons, the boys to do woodwork, at which Ernest was expected to excel, but regularly failed to do so; then there was what Mr Chisman called ‘sport’, which meant cricket in the summer and football in the winter, both played on the same uneven field of flattened grass which was inclined to develop potholes in bad weather. Singing, drawing and
play-reading
, usually an expurgated work of Shakespeare, each had one weekly hour in the timetable, and at
four o’clock the bell rang to signal the end of lessons for the day.