Mrs. Pringle of Fairacre (8 page)

So much must remain conjecture, but one thing was certain. Mrs Pringle, my arch enemy, had some human feelings after all. Those few sad minutes in the steamy lobby had been a revelation to me, and I felt a new regard for her.

Every community has its problem families. At Springbourne, our neighbouring village, the black sheep was Fred Pringle's brother Josh and his unfortunate relations.

In Fairacre we had the Coggs family. As in the case of Josh Pringle, all blame for the situation lay squarely on the shoulders of Arthur Coggs, the father. By nature he was lazy and of low intelligence. Added to that was his addiction to drink which made him boastful and belligerent when in his cups. It also made him a petty thief for he could not do without his beer, and was very seldom treated; Arthur Coggs, it was soon discovered, never stood his round.

He had various jobs, none of which lasted very long. He occasionally found casual work as a labourer on a building site, or as a roadman for the Caxley council. But absence, arriving late, and taking time off to visit the nearest pub soon ended his employment.

Mr Roberts, the Fairacre farmer, had done his best to give him work. He pitied Arthur's poor down-trodden wife, and the fast-growing family, but Arthur's feckless ways soon exhausted his employer's patience, and apart
from a little spasmodic field work at the appropriate time, Mr Roberts could do no more.

The village folk looked upon the Coggses with mingled pity and exasperation.

'If that gel of Arthur's had taken the rolling pin to him early on,' said Mr Willet roundly, 'she'd have done the right thing.'

'But he could easily have killed her,' I cried. 'She's a poor wispy little thing and must be terrified of him.'

'Bullies is always cowards,' replied Mr Willet trenchantly. 'Arthur's got away with it too easy, that's his trouble.'

Naturally, Mrs Pringle was the loudest in her condemnation of the slatternly ways of Mrs Coggs and her husband. As a strict teetotaller she also deplored Arthur's drunken habits.

'I know for a fact he signed the pledge, same as dozens of us years ago. A fat lot of good that done him. He's a proper waster, and we're all sorry for his poor wife. Not that she does much to help herself or that row of kids. She may be short of money, I give you that, but soap and water cost nothing, and those children and the house are a disgrace.'

'She doesn't have much of a chance,' I observed, opening the register and looking pointedly at the wall clock which said ten to nine.

'Those as behaves like doormats,' quoth Mrs Pringle, 'gets treated like 'em!'

As usual, she had the last word, and swept out into the lobby, meeting the rush of children who were swarming into school.

I had been at Fairacre School some five or six years when Joseph Coggs became a pupil. I liked the child from the
start. He was dark-haired and dark-skinned, with large mournful eyes. Somewhere in the past there had been gipsy forbears. He was appreciative of all that happened in school, and seemed to settle into an ordered way of life for which his early years could not have trained him.

He was in Miss Clare's class in the infants' room, so that I did not see a great deal of him. But he was an enthusiastic eater, and demolished his plates of school dinner with a joy which I shared whilst watching him.

The Coggs family lived in a broken-down cottage, one of four collectively called Tyler's Row. Their landlord was an old soldier who could not afford to keep the property in good heart, and it was widely thought that it would be better to see the whole place pulled down, and the families rehoused.

Not that all four cottages were as deplorable as the Coggs' establishment. The Waites next door kept their identical accommodation as neat as a new pin. An elderly couple in the first cottage were also house-proud, and Mrs Fowler who lived in the last one, although feared by all for her violent temper, was certainly house-proud to the point of fanaticism.

It was not surprising that the Coggses were a source of trouble to their close neighbours. Arthur Coggs's habit of roaring home when the pubs had closed did not make him popular. The neglected garden sent its weeds into the neighbouring neat plots, and the cries of unhappy children were clearly heard through the thin dividing walls.

'I wouldn't live near them Coggses for a bag of gold,' Mrs Pringle told me. 'They get more help than the rest of the village put together, but what good does that do 'em? All goes down Arthur's throat, that's what!'

As usual, she was right of course. Mrs Partridge, our vicar's wife, had told me of the kindness of people in the village who had provided clothes, bed linen, furniture and even pots and pans for the pathetic family.

'Most of the stuff,' said Mrs Partridge, 'was never seen again. Arthur exchanged all he could with his cronies and put the money on the bar counter. Gerald has taken him to task on many occasions, and I think he tries for a day or two, but soon falls back into his old bad habits. He was put on probation after one court appearance, and things were slightly better when the probation officer kept an eye on the family. But it really is a hopeless task.'

Mrs Pringle's attitude to Joseph Coggs on his arrival as a pupil was one of lofty disdain. Anyone, or anything, as grubby as the little boy was unwelcome. Not that she said anything to hurt the child's feelings, but he was ignored rather pointedly, I considered, and my affection for him was obviously deplored.

Not long after his entry into the school, there was a most disturbing incident. Mr Roberts, the farmer who is also one of Fairacre School's governors, had been missing eggs from the nest-boxes. He suspected that one of the children had been taking them, and very reluctantly asked me if he could look through the pockets of the coats hanging in the lobby.

Poor man! He was most unhappy about it all. We asked the children if they knew anything about it, but there was no response. Consequently, Mr Roberts and I went through their pockets and found three marked eggs in young Eric's pocket.

When faced with this, the boy confessed tearfully that he had indeed been taking the eggs, and on several occasions.

'And I give some to little Joe Coggs,' he sniffled abjectly. 'He saw me, and I never wanted him to tell.'

We dealt with the malefactor fairly leniently as he obviously was suffering much, though not as severely as Mr Roberts himself who was far more agitated than Eric or young Joseph when I confronted the little boy later. He had handed the eggs to his mother, who must have guessed that they were obtained by stealing, but was too delighted with the gift to take the matter further.

Mrs Pringle's attitude to the incident was predictable. 'What do you expect from that lot?' she asked dismissively.

'It won't happen again,' I assured her, 'both boys were very contrite.'

'It's easy enough to be
contrite,
as you call it, when you've been found out. But in my opinion, that Joe wants watching. Them Coggses is all tarred with the same brush.'

All the new entrants settled in quickly that term under Miss Clare's kindly guidance, and Joseph, although not particularly bright academically, proved to be a helpful and happy little boy.

The weather remained quite warm all through September and the early part of October, but suddenly the chill of autumn struck with clammy fog which veiled the downs and misted the school windows.

Our building is old and damp, and the skylight an ever-present trouble to us, admitting rain in wet weather and a howling draught at all times.

'Better start the stoves,' I said to Mrs Pringle, and waited for the usual delaying tactics.

'Bob Willet hasn't done me any kindling wood.'

'I'll see him at dinner time.'

'One of the coke hods is broken at the bottom.'

'I'll indent for another one. You should have told me before.'

'Matches is short, too.'

'I'll bring you a box from the house at play time.'

Then, her final thrust: 'What will The Office say?'

'I can deal with the Office.
Just light the stoves/'

Mrs Pringle, bristling with umbrage and muttering darkly, left my presence limping heavily.

We needed those stoves in the weeks that followed for winter seemed to have arrived early. A sharp east wind blew away the fog after some days, and draughts whistled round the classrooms. Every time the door opened, papers fluttered to the floor and top-heavy vases, stuffed with branches of autumn foliage, capsized and spilt water, berries and leaves everywhere. It was impossible to dodge the draught from the skylight, and I had a stiff neck only partially eased by a scarf tied round it.

The children wore their winter woollies or dungarees. Summer sandals were exchanged for Wellingtons or stout shoes. The shabbiest of all the children was Joseph, but even he had an extra cardigan - once owned by a girl if the buttoning was anything to go by - and I noticed that Miss Clare had moved him to a desk close to the stove.

The infants went home a quarter of an hour earlier than my class, but on one particularly bitter afternoon, as I was seeing my children out, I saw that Joseph was still in the playground.

'I was waitin' for Ernest,' he said gruffly in reply to my questioning. 'I goes a bit of the way with him.'

The child's hands were red with the cold, and he was sniffing lustily. I handed him a tissue from my pocket supply.

'No gloves?' I asked.

'No, miss.'

At that moment Ernest appeared.

'Well put your hands in your pockets,' I advised, 'and run along together to get warm.'

A few days later I had occasion to go into Miss Clare's classroom. As in my own, a row of damp scarves and gloves steamed gently over the top rail of the fireguard round the tortoise stove. Among the motley collection was a pair of thick red woollen gloves, obviously expertly knitted in double-knitting wool. I turned them over to help the drying process.

Joseph, from his nearby desk, looked up with pride. 'They's mine,' he said, 'Mrs Pringle give 'em to me.'

I exchanged puzzled glances with Miss Clare.

'I'll tell you later,' she whispered.

It all happened evidently on the afternoon when I had despatched Ernest and Joseph homeward in the bitter cold.

When Ernest had turned into his cottage, not far from the school, Joseph had continued on his solitary way. Most of his schoolfellows had run homeward, keen to get to the fireside and some welcoming food. Joseph, whose home was short of both comforts, dawdled along the village street, occasionally looking through a lighted window for interest.

As he came to the Post Office, which stood back from the village street, he was surprised, and a little alarmed, to hear a shout from Mr Lamb standing in his doorway.

'Joe! Come here a minute, boy.'

Wondering if he had done anything wrong, Joe approached. Grown-ups meant authority, and young Joseph was wary of tangling with those in power, used as he was to his parents' attitude to the police, the probation officer and even the kindly vicar himself.

Mr Lamb, unaware of the trepidation in young Joe's heart, was holding out a large door key.

'Can you nip round to Mrs Pringle's, Joe? She left the school key here when she dropped in for some stamps just now. She'll need it to get in for her cleaning any time now.'

Joseph, much relieved, and somewhat flattered to be entrusted with this task, nodded his assent and Mr Lamb put the heavy key into the small cold palm, folding the fingers over it.

'Don't drop it, will you? Be a fine old to-do if that got lost. I can't leave the shop, or I'd pop down myself, but it's not much beyond your place.'

'That's all right,' replied Joseph, and set off, clutching his burden.

His trepidation returned when he got to Mrs Pringle's back door. No one in his station of life would dare to knock at the front one, and Joseph automatically trotted round to the rear door, knocked timidly, and waited.

Mrs Pringle, who had seen the little figure coming up the path, appeared in the doorway Mutely, Joseph held out the key. Here was authority at its most formidable, and the child was struck dumb.