Village Affairs (5 page)

She was a cheerful young woman in her thirties whom I had met once or twice at teachers' meetings in Caxley. She had a young son of two, and had not taught since his birth,
but her mother lived nearby in Caxley, and was willing to mind the child if Mrs Ansell wanted to do occasional supply teaching.

All went well for a fortnight, and the children were settling down nicely under their new regime, when the blow fell. She rang me one evening to say that her mother had fallen down in the garden and damaged her hip. She was in Caxley hospital, and of course quite unable to look after Richard.

I expressed my sympathy, told her we could manage, and hung up.

Now what, I wondered? Supply teachers are as rare and as precious as rubies. Most of those local few who were in existence lived in Caxley and preferred to attend the town schools. I had been lucky enough to get Mrs Ansell because she particularly wanted to teach infants, liked country schools, and had her own car.

'I shall have to ring that office again in the morning,' I told Tibby gloomily. 'And what hope there?'

Tibby mewed loudly, but not with sympathy. Plain hunger was the cause, and I obediently dug out some Pussi-luv and put it on the kitchen floor. I then supplied my own supper plate with bread and cheese.

It was while I was eating this spare repast that I thought of Amy. She has helped us out on occasions, and there is no one I would sooner have as my companion at Fairacre School.

'Are you in the middle of your dinner?' was Amy's first remark.

'It's only the last crumb of bread and cheese,' I assured her.

'Is that all you have had?'

'Yes. Why?'

'I really do think you should be a little less slapdash with
your meals,' said Amy severely. 'And on your lap, I suppose. It's ruination to the digestion, you know, these scrambled snacks.'

'Well, never mind that,' I said impatiently, and went on to tell her of our troubles.

'Could you?' I finished.

'I could come on Monday,' said Amy, 'not before, I'm afraid, as I'm helping Lady Williams with the bazaar for the Save The Children Fund on Friday.'

'Come and save my children instead.'

'And it can't be for long,' went on Amy, 'as I have Vanessa coming some time next month.'

'But you could come for a week or two?'

'Probably three weeks. James is off to Persia on some trade mission or other, and then to Australia, I believe, unless it was New Zealand. They're so close, one gets confused.'

'I believe they are thousands of miles apart, and they get pretty stroppy at being muddled up. It's like the Scandinavian countries, isn't it? Do you know which is top and bottom of that craggy looking piece of coast line?'

'No, I don't. But I remember it was always a great help to trace the outline on the way home in the train. The movement was invaluable round the fiords.'

'You are a darling to come,' I said, reverting to the main topic. 'I'll ring the office in the morning and get things straight, and let you know the result. It really is murder trying to cope alone. One grazed knee or a pair of wet knickers is enough to stop us all in our tracks.'

'Never fear,' cried Amy, 'help is on its way!'

'The relief of Mafeking,' I told her, 'will be nothing to it.'

Jubilantly, I hung up.

***

The office gave its blessing to my arrangements, and we all awaited Amy's coming with varying degrees of pleasure.

My own feeling was of unadulterated relief. The Vicar, who has a soft spot for Amy, said it would be delightful to see her again, and how very generous she was with her time when one considered that she had a husband and a house to look after.

Mr Willet was equally enthusiastic.

'I can ask her about those pinks cuttings I give her,' he said. 'Always a bit tricky pinks are, if the soil's not to their liking. I'd dearly love to go over to Bent to keep an eye on 'em, but I don't want to push meself forward.'

I said I felt sure that Amy would welcome his advice, and he retired to the playground humming cheerfully.

Mrs Pringle greeted the news with modified rapture. Amy is too well-dressed, drives too large a car, and altogether has an aura of elegant affluence which Mrs Pringle disapproves of in a teacher. I think she feels that anyone as comfortably placed as Amy should do a little voluntary work for some deserving charity, but to take on a teaching job smacks too much of depriving some poor wretch of her rightful dues.

Since taking to her slimming diet, Mrs Pringle seems to be even more martyr-like than usual. She received the news of Amy's arrival on Monday with a resigned sigh.

'Best get both gates wide open,' she said, 'for that great car of hers. I take it you'll tell the children to keep off of it? It's a big responsibility havin' an expensive motor like that on the premises, and I haven't got eyes in the back of my head.'

I reassured her on the point.

'And last time she come, she didn't eat no potatoes I noticed. Now that's a bad example to the children. We tells.'em to eat up all they've got, and then they sees their teachers pickin' and choosin.' Just drop a word, Miss Read. She's your friend after all.'

'How's the dieting?' I asked, hoping to change the subject.

Mrs Pringle's gloom deepened.

'That Dr Martin's getting past it. Fairly snapped my head off when I went to get weighed, just because I've only lost two pounds in a month! I told him straight: "Well, at least I've
lost
it. There's no call to get so white and spiteful. Anyone'd think I'd
put on
two pounds!" He calmed down a bit then, and made me write down all I'd eaten since Sunday.'

'Could you remember?'

'Most of it. And when I give him the list, he shouted out so loud that Mrs Pratt's baby started hollering in the waiting room.'

'Why, what was wrong?'

'You may well ask. He shouted: "I said no cakes, no bread, no potatoes, and no sugar!" And I said to him: "How's a body to drink tea without sugar? And what's tea time without a slice of cake? And what's a dinner plate look like without a nice little pile of potatoes?" He never answered. Just went a bit pink, and hustled me out, telling me to do what he'd said. No sense to him these days. Too old for the job, if you ask me.'

'But he's right, you know. You won't lose weight unless you cut out all those lovely fattening things.'

'I don't call them
fattening,'
said Mrs Pringle, with immense dignity. 'They're
sustaining
! A woman what works as hard as I do needs nourishment. The days I've given up me bread and that, I've felt proper leer. Me knees have been all of a tremble. With this job to do, let alone my own home, I needs the food.'

There seemed little to add. Mrs Pringle shuffled off, limping slightly, a sure sign that her bad leg was giving trouble, as it always does in times of stress.

As she went, I noticed she did up a button on her cardigan which had burst from its buttonhole under excessive strain. The two pounds had not been lost from that portion of her anatomy obviously.

Come to think of it, I pondered, watching her massive rear vanish into the lobby, it would be difficult to say just where she had lost those pounds.

The hot weather continued, showing May in all her glory. In my garden the pinks began to break, shaking their shaggy locks from the tight grey cap which held them.

On the front of the school house, the ancient Gloire de Dijon rose, planted by one of my predecessors, turned its fragrant flat-faced flowers to the sunshine in all its cream and pink splendour.

The hay crop looked as though it would be heavy this year, and the bees were working hard. A field of yellow rape made a blaze of colour across one of Mr Roberts' stretches of land, and it was this, I suspect, that attracted so many bees to the area.

The copper beech was now in full leaf, and the box edging to the garden beds gave off its peculiar aromatic smell as the noonday sun drew out all the delicious scents of summer.

The school room door was propped open with a large knobbly flint, turned up by the plough in the neighbouring field. The sounds and scents wafted in, distracting the children from their work, so that I often took them all into the grass under the trees, and let them listen—or not—to a story. The
daddy-long-legs floated round us in the warm air, small birds chattered and squeaked in the branches above, and only the sound of Mr Roberts' tractor in the distance gave any hint of the village life which was going on around us. They were lovely sessions, refreshing to body and mind, and we always returned to the classroom in a tranquil state of mind.

Amy arrived on Monday morning, wearing a beautiful pale pink linen suit, but with her usual foresight had brought with her a deep rose-pink overall to ward off such infant room hazards as sticky fingers, spilt milk, and chalk dust.

Some of the children knew her already, and it was not long before her calm efficiency had made friends of them all. I closed the infants' room door with a sigh of relief, and set out to catch up with many neglected lessons with my older children.

Things went swimmingly all the week until Friday morning.

'Guess who I saw at the bus stop in Caxley,' said Amy, trying to adjust her hair by the reflection from 'The Light of the World' behind my chair.

'Haven't a clue,' I replied.

'Why don't you have a mirror somewhere? I see there isn't one in the lobby either. Where do you do your hair?'

'At home.'

'But surely, when you've been in the playground on a windy day, you—and the children, for that matter—need to tidy up.'

'We manage.'

'By just leaving things, I suppose,' said Amy. 'It's too bad of you, you know. The children should be set an example of neatness. And did you know that the hem is coming down on that frock?'

'I had a suspicion. There was an ominous tearing sound when I caught my heel in it this morning, but no time to investigate.'

'Dreadful!' murmured Amy, more in sorrow than anger. She does try so hard to improve me, with practically no success.

'You were telling me,' I said, 'about someone at the bus stop. Miss Clare?'

'At eight-thirty in the morning? Don't be silly.'

'Who then?'

'Mrs Fowler and Minnie Pringle's husband, whatever he's called.'

'What? Waiting for the bus to Springbourne?'

'It looked remarkably like it.'

I pondered upon this snippet of news.

'Do you think they might be going to collect his children from Minnie's?'

'It would be a jolly good thing if they did.' said Amy forthrightly, 'but I doubt it. They've managed quite happily without them, as far as one can see, so why suddenly want a family reunion now?'

'It certainly seems odd.' I agreed. 'Perhaps Mrs Pringle will be able to throw light on the matter.'

Sure enough, when Mrs Pringle arrived for her after school duties, it was quite apparent, from the important wobbling of her chins, that she had great news to impart.

'Well, I've got that Minnie of mine back again. I've left her grizzling in the kitchen and the children are in the garden. I've dared them to put a foot on the flower beds, unless they want to be skinned alive. I can't say fairer than that to them.'

'What's the matter this time?' I asked. Amy who had picked up her handbag ready to depart, put it down again and perched on the front desk to observe the scene.

Mrs Pringle looked at her with some dislike, but aquiver as she was with her momentous news, she decided to ignore her presence and tell all.

'That man had the cheek to come out to Minnie's this morning, with that woman who's no better than she should be, and I'll not soil my lips by repeating her name, and ask for his furniture back.'

'But can he? Isn't it the marital home, or whatever they call it in Court?'

'Whether he can or he can't,' boomed Mrs Pringle. 'He's done it. And that Mrs Fowler—'

'With whose name you wouldn't soil your lips,' I remembered silently.

'Well, she was at the bottom of it. It was that cat as put him up to it. And her nephew had his van waiting by Minnie's gate to put the stuff in. All planned and plotted you see. And off they drove, leaving our Minnie without a frying pan in the house.'

'Nothing at all?' I said horrified.

Mrs Pringle tutted with impatience.

'No, no, they never took
the lot,
I'll give 'em that, but they took two armchairs, and the kitchen table, and no end of china, and the upstairs curtains, and some cooking pots and the frying pan, so of course Minnie and the kids have had no dinner.'

I could not quite see why the frying pan was the only utensil needed to cook the family's food, but this was no time to go into all that, and I was beginning to feel very sorry for poor luckless Minnie, and for Mrs Pringle too, when her next remark cooled my sympathy.

'So it looks to me, Miss Read, as Minnie will be very glad to take up your offer of some work. She's got all that stuff to buy anew, and money's very tight anyway. I told her to come up and see you to arrange things some time.'

'Thank you,' I said faintly. It was an appalling prospect, and I cursed myself for ever making such an idiotic suggestion. I avoided meeting Amy's gaze. She appeared to be struggling to hide her very ill-timed amusement. Like Queen Victoria, my amusement was nil.