Village Centenary (14 page)

The school building looked exactly the same, and I recognised several trees as old friends, although considerably shorter. But a magnificent barn, end on to the road, has now gone. The rough grass still grows as thickly at the edge of the lane, and one small child holds a flower to his face, enjoying its scent forever.

With so many memories crowding upon me during this centenary year, I found this scene particularly moving, and shall always be grateful to Mr Lamb for presenting me with such an irreplaceable treasure.

With the end of term in sight I conferred with Miss Briggs about our plans. It seemed wise to let parents know in good time about our centenary affairs, especially those who might have costumes to prepare.

'After all, it is
next term,
' I pointed out, 'and Fairacre folk don't like to be hurried into things.'

'I should think that seldom happens,' replied my assistant. 'I've never met such a slow lot of parents. It's about time Fairacre moved with the times, and woke up.'

I was too taken aback by this attack to answer for a moment. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, was my first reaction!

'And I'm beginning to wonder,' she went on, 'if I don't owe it to myself to change to a livelier job.'

I hardly liked to point out that she had had some months of unemployment before she landed the Fairacre post. Also that she would need a glowing reference from me, which in all honesty I could not supply, to take her to another job, and in any case her probationary year had at least another term to run.

'If you do decide to try your luck,' I said at last, 'you know how much notice you must give. But if you'll take my advice I should get all the experience you can here before you think of changing.'

'Nothing seems to
happen
here!' cried my discontented assistant. 'I should think Fairacre School was exactly like this a hundred years ago! And, as far as I can see, it will be exactly the same a hundred years hence!'

Privately I hoped it would be, but I know full well that the wind of change buffets us daily, and that a school which has shrunk from that thriving community in Mr Lamb's photograph to the twenty-odd children who now comprise the school cannot hope to survive long.

'I think you must make an effort to join some activity or other which you'll enjoy in Caxley,' I said. 'What about the Operatic Society, or Caxley Dramatic Club? You like tennis, I know, and there are two good clubs in Caxley which you might enjoy. At least you would meet other young people. I know it must be pretty lonely for you here with no other young staff.'

'No one's asked me to join anything,' muttered Miss Briggs sulkily.

I began to feel my small stock of patience becoming as exhausted as Herr Hitler's.

'Well, of course, they haven't! They don't know you are
there]
Go along to a meeting, or find out the name of the secretary, and say you want to join. It's up to you. You can't expect these organisations to search the highways and byways.'

'I don't know if I shall have time, with all this centenary fuss to arrange,' said Miss Briggs, as though the entire burden of our celebrations rested on her dandruff-sprinkled shoulders.

I took a deep breath.

'Which brings us to the point. You'd better come to tea tomorrow and we'll draft out our plan.'

'I wash my hair tomorrow after school,' she said.

Far be it from me to stop that, was my unworthy thought.

'Make it Friday,' I said shortly, and got out the register.

Amy called the following evening, and I was glad that Miss Briggs was elsewhere attending to her hair. I enquired after the progress of the autobiography.

'Well, it's uphill work, I can tell you! As you know, I always think one's childhood is the most interesting part of an autobiography. But then, where does one begin?'

'I should think: "I was born on May the Whatever in Nether Wallop or Somesuch."'

'I feel that's too bald. I think people are glad to be told something about one's parents, but I dread going back too far and having sixteen, if not thirty-two, dubious portraits of forebears on each side.'

'I rather agree.'

'On the other hand, there were some very colourful ancestors on my mother's side. Two brothers were transported to Australia for stealing sheep and cattle.' Amy spoke with considerable pride.

'Well, put 'em in,' I advised.

'It would certainly swell the volume a little. You've no idea how much writing is needed to make a page of print. It's really quite daunting. I'm thinking of throwing in a distant great-uncle too. He was defrocked sometime in the last century for conduct not befitting the clergy. Something to do with the choir boys, I gather, but it's so difficult to find any clear evidence after all this time.'

'I'd no idea you had such a disreputable background, Amy.'

'My immediate background is blameless,' she assured me. 'And very dull too. My grandparents and parents seem to have worked hard, kept out of debt, looked after their small families, and generally been worthy and respectable. The consequence is that they make pretty dull reading matter, and I wonder if it might be a good idea to start farther back. I could have a family tree in the front.'

'Does anyone ever look at them? All I find is that having pulled the thing out, it is impossible to fold it correctly again, and you have half a yard of tissue paper in your lap all the time you are reading.'

'That's true,' agreed Amy. 'But going back to your first idea of plunging straight in with one's birth - do you think readers are
really gripped
by hearing about your being bottle fed and having your adenoids out, and the way you had hysterics at the age of four when Father Christmas kissed you, reeking of whisky?'

'All those things might create a sympathetic bond,' I said. 'As these confounded educationists tell us
ad nauseam,
children should be able to identify themselves with the characters they are reading about. Though how you can identify with Sinbad the Sailor or Tom Thumb beats me.'

'Well, all I can say is that I have spent a good hour after tea every day for the past fortnight, pushing along my reluctant ball point, and I don't suppose I have written enough to fill four pages of a real book. It's very disheartening.'

'Cheer up!' I said. 'Think how splendid it will look piled up in the book shops with queues outside fighting to get in to buy it. And you on television. Possibly on
This Is Your Life.
Just think of that!'

'I refuse to consider it,' said Amy firmly.

Mrs Partridge, the vicar's wife, called at the school the next morning, and the children sat up with smiles wreathing their faces.

They like Mrs Partridge. I like to think it is for herself alone, for she is a kind, warm-hearted person and devoted to the young, but I have the feeling that she is welcomed more for the bag of boiled sweets which she so often brings with her.

Today was no exception, except that the sweets were toffees and not fruit drops. The children's response to this largesse was ecstatic, as Patrick handed round the bag.

'Now, my dear,' said Mrs Partridge when all were busy sucking. 'I wonder if you can do me a favour.'

What answer is there to that after such generosity?

'Of course,' I said rashly.

'I'm short of collectors for my
Save The Children
flag day next week, and I wondered if you could help.'

'Where would you want me to go?' I asked, resigned to my lot.

'Well, I'm doing from The Beetle and Wedge to the crossroads, and Margaret Waters is doing the other side of the road, and Joan Benson was to have done that outlying part from her house to Tyler's Row, but she has had to hare off to look at a couple of houses her daughter has found. It is that stretch that I hoped you might find time to do.'

I agreed to take over Joan's territory, and Mrs Partridge whipped a piece of paper from the top of the basket she was carrying, and placed a collecting tin on my desk with incredible speed.

'That's
most
kind of you, dear,' she said briskly. 'Could you let me have it back by Thursday? And here is your official badge, and the flags.'

The piece of paper had successfully hidden all these things in the basket, and I noticed yet another collecting tin and more flags, still to be allotted presumably.

'I'll do that,' I promised. Bang go the two evenings I had earmarked for making strawberry jam and bottling cherries, I thought!

She wished the children goodbye, and they replied with their diction somewhat impeded by toffee, but true love shining in their eyes.

The door had hardly closed before Eileen Burton was sick on the floor, and one of the Coggs twins began to choke on a large piece of sweet which had gone down the wrong way.

I hastily put the collecting box on the window sill before going to the rescue.

Save The Children
indeed! What about the teachers?

Miss Briggs duly stayed late on Friday, and accompanied me to the school house for tea. She appeared somewhat monosyllabic and sulky, but whether she was feeling resentful at staying after school, or whether she was simply being natural - Mr Willet's 'a fair old lump of a girl' came to mind - I could not say.

However, she cheered up a little after three cups of tea, brown bread and honey followed by a large slice of Dundee cake, and we settled down with pencils and notebooks to our task.

'I think six scenes will be ample,' I said, 'which means something from the reigns of Victoria, Edward the Seventh, George the Fifth, Edward the Eighth - unless we leave him out - George the Sixth, and our present Queen.'

'Good idea,' agreed Miss Briggs, sucking a sticky finger. 'If we had a scene for every decade that would make ... how many?'

'Ten,' I told her. 'You ought to know that - child of the metric system as you are.'

'Yes, well - if we had the scenes lasting only ten minutes that would be far too long, wouldn't it?'

'My feeling entirely. We can't expect people to sit on the school seats for more than an hour altogether, and if we have a few songs, and then tea afterwards it is as much as the human frame can take.'

'Have you found some likely stories from the log book?'

'One or two. I thought for the first scene we could use the boy Pratt putting on the school clock, and being caught by the head mistress.'

'Lovely! But how will he climb up? Would he pile up the desks?'

I repressed a shudder.

'No. We'll have Mr Willet's step ladder to hand. After all, it just
may
have been left in the schoolroom. And through all the scenes we'll use the old side desk, and the actors will be in period costume, of course. When we get to Elizabeth the Second we can push on a modern desk. The old style were in use when I first came here. I must say, they were pretty sturdy.'

'Then what?' asked my assistant, bringing me back to the work in hand.

'Well, for Edward the Seventh, I thought it would be marvellous if I could say something like: "It was in this reign that a new pupil teacher took up her duties", and in walks Miss Clare!'

'Perfect!'

'Then she could tell us about her experiences of that time. I have sounded her, and she's game to do it. Frankly, I think it will be the high spot of the whole proceedings.'

'What about George the Fifth?'

'I think it will have to have something to do with the Great War.'

I told her about Miss Clare's memories of the babies fraying pieces of cotton material to make field dressings. We could enlarge on helping-the-war effort theme, without dwelling unduly on the horrors which many of the older people in the audience would remember all too well. I wondered if one of the parents who went as a child from Fairacre School to the Wembley Exhibition might give an enthusiastic first-hand account of a country child's memories of that memorable charabanc ride to London in the twenties. Mr Lamb perhaps? Or Mrs Willet? I promised to follow up the idea.

The more we thought about Edward the Eighth's brief reign the stronger became our resolve to leave out a scene, and simply let the narrator comment on that passage of time. Apart from the Abdication, which really had very little impact on the children of the school, there was little to mark the reign's fleeting impression on the village.

The 1939–45 war, which followed within three years, had much more effect, of course, and we resolved to show the crowded desks, with the gas mask boxes lodged thereupon, and one or two wartime posters pinned up - as evidently there had been in Mr Fortcscue's session as headmaster at that time. Luckily, Mr Willet still had two precious relics, one showing the results of careless talk and the other of wasting food. There were one or two incidents in the log book which could form the basis of a scene, and perhaps Mrs Austen of Springbourne might be prevailed upon to give her impressions of Fairacre School from an evacuee's point of view.

As for our last, and present-day, scene, what could be better than drawing the audience's attention to the children's exhibition of work in both rooms, singing by the whole school, and the narrator pointing out such facts as the vanishing of those over eleven to the local comprehensive school and cutting down the numbers of Fairacre School drastically after the 1944 Act?

Finally, I had asked the vicar if he would appear at the end and remind us all that the church had always played an important part in the hundred years of Fairacre School. He was willing to do this, and to end our proceedings with a prayer for blessings received in the past, and our hopes for the future.

'That should take us up to tea very nicely,' said Miss Briggs kindly.

'We'll all need it by then,' I assured her. 'And now let's rough out which children would be best as the actors.'

It took us until nearly seven o'clock, but we felt it had been worth it. Certainly, Miss Briggs departed looking very much more cheerful than when she arrived, and had been surprisingly helpful.

***

The weather had been perfect, at least in my eyes, for the last few weeks of term. The sun had shone from a cloudless sky, every playtime had found the schoolroom deserted and the playground crowded with good-tempered children playing with unusual placidity. But I was surprised, nevertheless, to hear that an official drought had been declared, and we were all being exhorted to save water.