Mrs. Pringle of Fairacre (5 page)

'But apart from them undesirables,' continued Mrs Pringle, 'there's a lot of good folk you'd like. Mrs Partridge is President. She looks after us a fair treat.'

I could imagine that she would, brave, fair-minded and tactful woman that she was. A vicar's wife must get plenty of day-to-day training in diplomacy.

Consequently, I took myself along to the next meeting and was welcomed with surprising warmth.

We all sang 'Jerusalem' with varied success, listened to interminable arrangements about various activities to which no one apparently wanted to go, and voted on paper for our choice of Christmas treat, Caxley pantomime, tea-party with magician in the village hall, or coach trip to London for Christmas shopping. I plumped for the last, and had visions of going straight to Harrods Food Hall and buying almost all my Christmas presents there in one fell swoop.

After that, a very nervous flower-arranger who was inaudible except to those of us in the front row, showed us
how to make 'The Best of our Late Blooms'. The response was lack-lustre, I felt, and only the knitters behind me, busy clicking their needles, really benefitted.

But tea time was the real highlight. Despite the fact that it was past eight o'clock in the evening, we all fell upon home-made sponges, wedges of treacle tart, shortbread fingers, and squares of sticky gingerbread, as though we had not seen food for weeks.

I met a host of cheerful women, several of them with children at the school, and many of them former pupils, and went home as a fully paid-up member of Fairacre's W.I.

It will not surprise any newcomer to a village to know that I was also committed to supplying a contribution to the next month's tea table, and had agreed to stand in for the Treasurer when she had her baby.

Of such stuff is village life made. And very nice, too.

One of the nicest women I met at our local Women's Institute was Alice Willet, wife of Bob. She had been at our school as a child, and had many memories of Fairacre folk including Maud Gordon when she visited her adopted uncle and aunt during the school holidays.

'Mind you,' she said, 'I could never take to her. She was a year or two older than me, and bossy with it. I kept out of her way when she was around in Fairacre.'

Some years later, it seems, Miss Parr, who lived at the largest house in Fairacre, was looking for a housemaid to replace her well-trained Mary who had been with her for over twenty years and had had the effrontery to get married.

Miss Parr was a great power in the village. She had, in fact, been the most venerable of the school governors who had appointed me to the headship of Fairacre School, and so I was particularly interested in her history.

Her family, it appears, came from Lancashire where innumerable cotton mills had brought them much wealth in the last century. Hard-headed and shrewd, the money had been invested, not only in enlarging the mills, but in
divers other money-making ventures. Miss Parr had inherited a fortune, as well as the commonsense of her forbears, and lived in style in the Queen Anne house in Fairacre.

She employed a head gardener and an under-gardener, and a chauffeur to look after her limousine. Indoors, a cook and a housemaid coped with most of the chores, although a succession of what Miss Parr termed 'village women' came in to help with 'the rough' and the laundry work.

Those she employed spoke well of her, and stayed in her service. She was not lavish in her payments but they were paid on the dot, and in those hard times one was lucky to have a job at all. Also, when the garden was producing more than one lone lady and her staff could consume, the gardeners and the daily helpers could take home this welcome largesse to their families.

'She kept a sharp eye on things, of course,' said Mrs Willet. 'I mean, her people had made their money by looking after the pennies, and she took after them. And when she found old Biddy Stamper had helped herself to a bunch of grapes and some peaches from the hot-house, and was trying to smuggle them out with the washing, she got the sack there and then, and never set foot in the house again.'

Mrs Willet nodded her approval before continuing. 'Well, when Mary left, Mrs Pringle's auntie, Mrs Baker, she went up to Miss Parr's to see if she could put in a word for her Maud. Mrs Baker was one of the women that helped with the ironing each week, so she knew the house and all that. Miss Parr thought a lot of her. She was a dab hand with the ironing, and could use a goffering iron.'

'I've never heard of such a thing!' I exclaimed.

'Oh, it was what you used to crimp the edges of things. Mary's afternoon caps had to be goffered, and some collars
too that she wore. I believe some people even goffered the frills round their pillow cases. Anyway, Mrs Baker was famous for her goffering, and Miss Parr had a soft spot for anyone as was good at their particular job.'

Thus it was that Miss Parr agreed to see Maud, and up the girl went, all dressed neat-but-not-gaudy, to the big house one evening.

'And did she get the job?'

'She did. We was all a bit surprised seeing that Maud was so much younger than Mary, but she'd had a good bit of experience at the Howards' place in Caxley, both in their house and the restaurant, so top and bottom of it was she was taken on.'

'And gave satisfaction obviously.'

'That's right. Well, you know yourself, our Mrs Pringle is a good worker, despite her funny little ways. No one can touch her for cleaning brass, and she can get any
bit of furniture up to look like satin. The only snag was Henry.'

'Henry?' I queried.

'The chauffeur. He was a real knock-out. All us girls were a bit soft on Henry.'

Mrs Willet's pale cheeks were suffused with a becoming blush, and her eyes grew misty with memories. Henry, I surmised, must have been a real lady-killer.

'He had dark wavy hair,' continued Mrs Willet, looking dreamily towards the window as if he still lingered in the village outside. 'And one of them Ronald Coleman moustaches. And I've never seen such eye-lashes on anyone, girl or boy. He was nice with it, too. Very soft-spoken, and kind to everyone. Miss Parr thought the world of him, and we did too.'

'Mrs Pringle as well?' I asked, my mind boggling at the thought of Mrs Pringle being undone by love.

'Worse than any of us,' asserted Mrs Willet. 'She was forever making sheep's eyes at him. I was going steady at the time with Bob, so I didn't see a lot of Maud, but all the village was talking about her.'

'What about Henry? It must have been embarrassing for him working at the same place.'

'Nothing worried Henry. He was as nice to Maud as he was to everybody, but he did try and keep out of her way. He didn't want to lose his job after all.'

'Did Miss Parr know?'

'She guessed something was up when she saw Maud coming out of the bothy.'

'The bothy?'

'The room near the coach-house where Henry lived,' explained Mrs Willet. 'Maud had the cheek to take a cake over there for him. Of course, the bothy was out of
bounds to women, just as the attics where the maids slept was out of bounds to the men. When Miss Parr caught her, she gave her a fine old dressing-down, but Maud wriggled out of it that time, and was allowed to stay on.'

'She was lucky.'

'But Henry wasn't. Miss Parr had him up in the drawing room that evening and cook heard it all.'

'How?'

'Well, I take it she was passing at the time,' said Mrs Willet, looking slightly confused, 'and then they was both shouting, cook said, so she couldn't help hearing.'

'And what did she hear?'

'Not as much from Miss Parr as she did from Henry, but I gather he fairly let fly when Miss Parr as good as told him that he'd been leading Maud on. "Such a young innocent girl too!" cook heard her say. And evidently that tore it.'

Mrs Willet paused to find a snowy handkerchief in her sleeve. 'He told Miss Parr it was the other way round. Maud had been pestering him. And then he went on to say what he thought of Maud, in the most dreadful language that I wouldn't repeat to you, though cook never turned a hair when she repeated it to all and sundry in Fairacre. My Bob told her to wash out her mouth with carbolic, I remember.'

'So Henry was sacked?'

'No. He gave in his notice there and then, and left at the end of the week. I think Miss Parr regretted the whole affair, but of course it was easier to get a good chauffeur than a good worker like Maud in those days. But how we all missed him!'

Mrs Willet sighed. 'He had a green uniform to match the car. Very trim figure he was in that. What with his smile and his nice ways, he was a real gentleman.'

'What happened to him?'

'He got a job in foreign parts.'

I imagined that trim green-suited figure driving wealthy Americans about, or being snapped up by an Indian rajah.

'Northampton, I think it was,' said Mrs Willet, 'or maybe Leicester. We never saw him again.'

She sounded wistful.

'And Mrs Pringle?'

'Well, with Henry gone she turned her attention to the next best thing on the premises, and that was the under-gardener.'

'What about the head gardener?'

'He was married already, but the under one was easy game. And anyway the head gardener moved off soon after Henry to open a nursery garden of his own, so the under-gardener was promoted and had a rise in wages.'

'How did he respond to Maud's advances?'

'Didn't stand a chance. It was Fred Pringle, you see. He soon knuckled under, and he's stayed that way ever since.'

It was a few days later that Bob Willet continued this enthralling episode in Fairacre's history.

'You could've knocked us down with a feather when we heard poor old Fred was engaged to Maud. Not that he had a chance, of course, but Maud was so high and mighty and the Pringles had a bad name.'

'Why?'

'They was all a bit harum-scarum, and Josh Pringle, Fred's brother, was a proper bad lot - poachin', pinchin', fightin'—always in trouble and turnin' up in Caxley court. No end of kids, and half of them not his wife's, if you follow me.'

I said I did.

'The Bakers was upset about it, but couldn't do much. After all, Maud was of age -
over
age, come to that - and she and Fred got married in Caxley where her parents lived, so us Fairacre folk didn't see or hear much about the weddin'. All this was before the war, of course.'

'But I take it they came to live in Fairacre?'

'Oh yes! In one of Miss Parr's cottages, near where they are now. Fred did the garden and Maud helped in the house until John was on the way when she stopped workin' at Miss Parr's. She used to give a hand once a week to the Hopes who were livin' here at the school house, and then the Bensons when Mr Benson took over. That's when she became school cleaner.'

Mr Willet paused, blowing out his cheeks. 'Still,' he went on, rallying slightly, 'I suppose she's done a good job, considerin'. She done it all through the war, while Fred was away. We all reckoned it did poor old Fred a power of good to get away from Maud during the war. He looked much fresher when he come back.'

'I haven't seen Mr Pringle yet.'

'Nor likely to,' responded Bob Willet. 'After the war he got a job up the Atomic, and he's still at it. Gets the Atomic bus soon after seven, and when he gets home he spends most of the time in that shed of his at the end of the garden.'

'What does he do there?'

'Keeps out of her ladyship's way, I shouldn't wonder, but he makes things with matchsticks as well.'

'Matchsticks?' I exclaimed, my mind boggling.

'Models and that. Fairacre Church he done once, and it was on show at the village fête. Then he done a piano not life size, of course - and that was a real masterpiece, and a
set of chairs for a dolls' house. He's a clever chap in his way, although he don't say much. Come to think of it, I suppose he can't get a word in edgeways with his missus, so he's driven to matchsticks.'

He made for the door. 'Best have another tidy up of the coke pile. Them little varmints can't leave well alone.'

And he departed, leaving me to mull over the story of Mrs Pringle's love life.

During these early days at Fairacre I had a great deal to learn, not only about my new job, but also about the people of the village.

Mrs Pringle herself enlightened me on many aspects of life in the country. At that time the village had no piped water, and rain barrels stood by the houses collecting rainwater from the roofs.

I soon learnt to appreciate this precious fluid, and Mrs Pringle was my chief adviser. What she called 'the top quality', that is the filtered water which supplied the school house, was used for drinking and cooking. The rainwater from the barrels was used for bathing, hair washing, laundering and other household activities, but still had other uses which Mrs Pringle explained to me.

'The soapy water from the washing does for the floors,' she told me, 'and then after that you can use some for pouring over the flagstones on the path, and give them a good brushing with a stiff broom. And what's left you throws over the cabbages and such-like in the garden. There's no need,' she continued, turning a fierce eye upon me, 'to waste a drop!'