(18/20) Changes at Fairacre (23 page)

My journey home, after dropping the Coggs children was uneventful, although the snow was still falling heavily. One thing, I told myself, tomorrow was blessed Saturday, and there would be no need to face an early journey to school.

I set about my usual preparations for bad weather while the light remained, bringing in extra coal and logs, looking out candles and my trusty Primus stove, in case we had a power cut. I left a spade in the porch in case I had to dig my way out the next morning, and I went early to bed.

It was good to get between the sheets, nicely warmed with a hot bottle, and the fact that the wind had started to howl round the cottage only emphasized the snugness of my bedroom beneath the thatched roof.

Let the elements rage, I thought drowsily, as I nestled deeper beneath the bedclothes!

I ought not to have been so complacent. When morning light came, I was appalled at the amount of snow which surrounded my home, and stretched in billowing waves and whorls of whiteness, as far as the eye could see.

The wind had whipped the snow into enormous drifts. Hedges had disappeared. Garden walls and gates were engulfed, and against some of the nearby houses the snow was so deep that it was within a few feet of the upstairs windows in places. There must have been a fearsome blizzard during the night, and I hastened downstairs to see how my house had fared.

I was fortunate in that the wind had piled the snow at the side of my home, and with the help of the spade I could clear a way out of both front and back doors, although I doubted if I should ever be able to dig a path to my gate.

An eerie light flooded the house, partly reflected from the snow, and partly from those windows which were plastered with it and filtered the morning light.

I soon had my kettle on, and was thankful that the electricity had not failed. But I was perplexed that Tibby had not appeared. Surely that comfort-loving animal had not ventured out during the night?

The weather men gave gloomy forecasts of more snow to come although the northern half of the kingdom would come off worst, evidently. As it was, I found my own attempts at snow-clearing later that morning were quite exhausting enough.

I remembered Dolly telling me about a very old man she had known as a child at Beech Green. He was the grandfather of her close friend Emily Davis, and had been caught in the great blizzard of 1881. By the time he was discovered, many hours later, he was suffering from severe frost-bite and lost some fingers. Ever afterwards, Dolly told me, he wore a black leather glove on the maimed hand, and it was this that fascinated her. I only hoped that we were not in for the same length of horrific conditions as that memorable winter.

It was good to see the snow plough chugging along during the morning. There was something to be said for mechanized transport, I thought, waving to the men as they passed by slowly. In 1881, even the stout shire horses had to remain in their stables while the weather was at its worst. Today, a poor benighted traveller trapped in the snow, as Emily's grandfather had been so long ago, would be rescued by a helicopter, and whisked into hospital. Change, I thought, was often deplored. In these conditions it was welcome.

By mid-morning, there was still no sign of Tibby and I began to get alarmed. There were no tell-tale footprints around the house, but then they would soon have been obliterated in last night's conditions.

I rang the Annetts and also Mrs John in the hope that they had seen him, but there was no help there. I called until I was hoarse, hoping to hear an answering mew from some over-looked shelter, but nothing happened. I had gloomy visions of the poor animal entombed beneath the blanket of snow like John Ridd's sheep in
Lorna Doone.
How long could a cat survive without food in such a situation? One thing, Tibby had plenty of surplus fat to live on, as Bob Willet was fond of pointing out, but would the cold kill him?

I began to get more and more agitated as the hours passed, and remembered all the captivating ways of my truant, and how much his companionship meant to me. By the time early evening began to cast its shadows, I was near despair. At that moment, the lights began to flicker ominously, and I decided that it would be as well to delve into the recesses of the cupboard under the stairs to find the ancient Aladdin lamp stored there.

I undid the door, and bent double to locate the lamp in the gloom. A lazy chirruping sound met me, and Tibby emerged sleepily and greeted me with much affection. Relief overcame my initial irritation with the maddening animal. Why had there been no response to my anguished cries? Why, last night of all nights, had he decided to sleep in that cupboard? I suppose I must have left the door ajar on my first visit there for candles, and then automatically shut it in passing later on. In any case, it was good to see my old friend, and a double portion of Pussi-luv vanished in a twinkling.

Snow fell again that night, and the paths so exhaustingly cleared were white again. The roads from most of the villages into Caxley were partially open, but around Fairacre itself, I gathered, the drifts were still deep. It looked as though, yet again, my school would have to remain closed.

I rang the office first thing on Monday morning to get an overall picture. It was not very encouraging.

'All schools closed for the next three days,' I was told. 'The school buses and the dinner vans are going to have great difficulty in getting around. Some can't even get out of the depot yet. We'll be in touch on Wednesday, and simply hope that the thaw will have come by then.'

I talked to Mr Lamb and the vicar on the telephone, and they assured me that everyone possible would be told the position.

Gerald Partridge sounded unusually despondent. Snow had seeped into his beloved church and ruined a pile of new hymn books. Even worse, the organ was found to be thoroughly damp from some hitherto unsuspected leak from the roof, and repairs to it could cost a fortune.

'And what about the school and the school house?' I asked him, hoping to deflect him from his own worries.

'I'm afraid I haven't been into the school. Bob Willet has been unable to get up to it yet, there is such a great snow drift in the lane, but I struggled out with Honey to just behind your old home and it looks none the worse for the snow. The tarpaulin has stood up wonderfully against the weather.'

I said I was relieved to hear it.

'Incidentally,' he continued, 'the diocese has definitely decided to put it on the market as soon as it is habitable again. It should be ready by about Easter, if all goes well.'

'Well, it's a dear little house as I know. It should sell, I think.'

'One wonders. Or will it be the
third
empty house in Fairacre? I hear that the price of those two new ones has dropped again. It is definitely not the time to try and sell one's property.'

'A buyer's market. Isn't that the expression?'

'I believe so. But there seem to be no buyers about. I suppose they can't
buy
, until they have
sold
their own.'

'There are such people as first-time buyers,' I told him, thinking of Horace and Eve. 'Perhaps they'll turn up in time.'

'One can only hope,' agreed the vicar. But he sounded very unhopeful as I rang off.

We were closed for a week. It was a frustrating time for everyone. Two days of the seven we were without electricity, and I found that half a day coping with oil stoves, candles and matches, was quite enough for the small amount of pioneering spirit I possessed, especially as the only source of hot water was a kettle lodged on the Primus stove which took forever, it seemed, to come to the boil.

After that, I was heartily fed up with automatically and vainly switching on in every room I entered, only to be frustrated yet again.

The snow plough had made me thankful for mechanized transport, and now I realized all too clearly how much we took for granted in our all-electric houses. It was probably salutory to be reminded of our dependence on this source of power, but it did nothing to improve our tempers.

I found myself using methods of cooking, lighting and heating which Dolly's mother had used daily in this selfsame cottage years before. The open fire had to be kept going with coal and logs, and I left the sitting-room door open at night so that some heat would penetrate into the chilly bedrooms.

The lamps had to be trimmed and filled, and the candles replaced. I even rolled up an old rug to stuff against the bottom of the outside door to keep out the wicked draughts, and wished I had the straw-filled sausage of Victorian times to do the job, as Dolly had described.

When at last the power returned, we were all mightily grateful to those men who had restored it, and we counted our blessings with thankful hearts.

It was quite a relief to return to school.

Bob Willet had done a magnificent job in clearing the playground, and Mrs Pringle gave me a graphic account of the state of her beloved tortoise stoves after a week's neglect.

'They was that damp and mildewy you could've written your name on 'em. And all down one side there was the beginning of rust where the water had run along a beam from that dratted skylight, and dropped down on to my poor stove. We'll have to get another load of blacklead from the Office, and if they gives you any hanky-panky, Miss Read, just let me speak to them.'

I promised to do that, rather looking forward to such an encounter. Mrs Pringle, in defence of her stoves, is a formidable figure, and I trembled for any of the staff at the Caxley Education Office who questioned her demands. What can they know of blacklead, who only red tape know?

The children were full of tall stories about the snow and the havoc it had caused. Patrick told us that his little brother fell in a drift near Mr Mawne's and they only found him because he was wearing a red bobble hat and the bobble stuck up from the snow.

Ernest then capped this with a long rigmarole about his father's bike which was hidden for days by the front gate. But when John Todd tried to make us believe that he had rescued Mr Roberts's house cow single-handed from a snow drift in a neighbouring field, I thought it was time to put a stop to matters. Imagination is one thing; downright lying is another.

'To your desks,' I ordered briskly. 'We'll have a really stiff mental arithmetic test.'

I was not popular.

17 Minnie Pringle Lends a Hand

WE were all very thankful to tear off
JANUARY
from our calendars and to look hopefully at
FEBRUARY.

The days were now perceptibly longer, and I took my first walk-after-tea of the year, in the light. The catkins were a cheerful sight, fluttering from the bare hedgerows, and the bulbs in the garden were poking through. A clump of early yellow irises were already in flower. I had given the tiny bulbs to Dolly some years earlier, and she had planted them under the shelter of the thatch where they thrived.

The birds were busy, bustling about, full of self-importance as they scurried about their courting.

Life was beginning to look more hopeful after all we had endured from gales, snow and flooding.

The children's coughs and colds faded. At playtime they could get into the playground for exercise and fresh air, and altogether I began to enjoy a period of relaxation and to make plans for a variety of outdoor pursuits in the months ahead.

Alas for my euphoria!

As one might expect, I was about to have my comfortable rug snatched from under my feet, and of course it was inevitable that Mrs Pringle would do the snatching.

She caught me in the lobby as soon as I arrived. I might have guessed from her unusually cheerful face that something was up.

'My doctor,' she began importantly, 'though a poor tool in many ways, as well you know, Miss Read, says I'm to have a thorough check-up on my leg, and I've got to go to The Caxley for an X-ray.'

'Oh dear! When?'

'Friday. Not till the afternoon, so I can do the washing-up. But he says I may have to lay up for a bit.'

'Well, there it is. I'm glad you told me. Are you in pain?'

The reply was as expected.

'I'm
always
in pain, as well you know. Not that it stops me doing my duty. Never has! My mother used to say to me: "Maud, you are your own worst enemy with that conscience of yours. Can't you ever
spare
yourself?" And I used to say: "No, mother. I'm just made that way. What needs to be done, I must do, cost what it may in time and trouble." And it's the same today.'

'It does you credit,' I said, paying a tribute to this eulogy of self-satisfaction. 'Let's hope the X-ray shows nothing seriously wrong.'

Mrs Pringle limped about rather more heavily than usual while the hospital mills ground their slow way through her data. The results were that she should rest the leg for a fortnight and then have another examination.

'Don't worry,' I said, on hearing the news, 'we can easily manage for two weeks. I believe Alice Willet might sweep up, and Bob has always been helpful about the stoves in an emergency.'

'If you let Bob Willet lay so much as a finger on my stoves,' said Mrs Pringle, puffing up like an outraged turkey, 'I shall give in try notice.'