(1/20) Village School (10 page)

We parted with various good wishes for Christmas and they skipped away taking with them my cards to post.

On Christmas Eve I had had more visitors. The carol-singers arrived on a clear, frosty night, bearing three hurricane lamps on long poles, and pushing a little harmonium which Mrs Pratt played. Mr Annett conducted them with vigour, and in the light of one of the lamps I saw that brother Ted had been prevailed upon to bring his flute. The fresh country voices were at their best in the cold night air, and even Mr Annett seemed pleased with his choir's efforts.

'Splendid!' he said vigorously, as 'Hark, the herald angels sing' dwindled to a close, and he beamed upon them all with such goodwill that I wondered if brother Ted's two bottles had been broached before they had set off, or whether it was indeed the spirit of Christmas that had softened him to include even Mrs Pringle in his expansive smile.

The new term found a depleted school, for measles had broken out in the village. In the infants' room Mrs Finch-Edwards had only twelve children to teach, out of eighteen, and I had only twenty out of twenty-two.

The weather was bitterly cold, with an east wind that flattened the grass and shrivelled the wallflower plants against the school wall. The skylight had undergone its usual repairs during the holiday, and though we had had no rain yet to test its endurance to the weather, it certainly let in a more fiendish draught than usual, which gave me a stiff neck.

The children did not want to go out into the playground, and with the weather as it was I doubted whether they would gain much from the airing; but being school-bound made them quarrelsome and cantankerous. Tempers were short and Mrs Pringle more annoying than ever with her fancied grievances and nagging at the children.

We all longed for the spring, for sunshine and flowers, and the thought that we were only in January made that prospect all the more hopeless.

It was during arithmetic one morning, when I had been teaching the middle group to multiply with two figures, that John Burton came out with the astonishing remark: 'I'm done! Can't do no more!'

He threw his pen down on to the desk, leant back and closed his eyes. He, as a top group member, had been working quietly at some problems from the blackboard, and this outburst made us all stop and stare.

'If you can't do any more of those, John,' I said, 'try some from Exercise Six.'

'I've said, ain't I, that I can't do no more?' shouted John, glaring at me. This was quite unlike his usual docile manner and I felt annoyed.

'What nonsense—' I began, when, to my amazement, he burst into tears, resting his head on his arms on the desk.

The children were much shocked that John, the head boy, the school bellringer, the biggest boy there, should indulge in such childish weakness! Their eyes and mouths were like so many O's.

I went over to him and raised his head. It was difficult to tell from the tears and congestion if he were feverish or not, but his forehead was burning.

'Have you had measles?'

'No, miss.'

'Is your mother at home?'

'No, miss. She's got a job at Caxley this week.'

'Anyone at home?'

'Not till four o'clock.'

I went to see Mrs Finch-Edwards.

'I'll leave the door open while I take him over to the house, if you'll keep an eye on them. What about Eileen?'

His little sister looked perfectly normal. She had not had measles, but technically she was now in quarantine if, as was fairly obvious, her brother had got it. We decided to compromise by putting her desk in the front, away from the others, for the rest of the day.

John looked very sorry for himself as he lay on the sofa under a rug, with the thermometer protruding from his mouth.

'Did you say your mother was serving at Sutton's the fish-shop?'

John nodded, as he was effectively gagged with the thermometer. I looked up the telephone number as we waited, thinking, not for the first time, how sad it is when mothers with young children have to take full-time jobs, and how impossible it is to try and be a substitute.

The thermometer stood at 102 degrees when I took it from his mouth. I tucked him up more securely in his rug, poked up the fire and went out into the hall to telephone to his mother.

'Speak to Mrs Burton?' said a voice, which I supposed to be the fishmonger's. 'She's serving at the moment.'

'Then I'll hang on,' I said, 'but this is urgent. Her little boy is ill and she will have to come immediately.'

'It's most inconvenient,' said the fishmonger severely, 'but I'll tell her.'

Mrs Burton was sensible and practical. She would be on the next bus, and intimated that if Mr'S. didn't like it he could lump it. I went back to tell John the good news, but he had fallen asleep, breathing heavily, his forehead damp with sweat, so I crept out and across to the school.

It is this sort of occasion that makes one realize how absolutely necessary it is for every school, however small, to have two people who can take charge. Without Mrs Finch-Edwards there to superintend the children, any sort of accident might have happened; and I thought of several schoolmistresses that I knew, in the charge of perhaps twenty or more children, with no adult help within call, who might be coping at this very moment with such an emergency and with all the added mental distress of their lonely circumstances. It is a position in which no teacher should have to find herself, and yet it is, alas, a common one in our country areas.

It was during this bleak and plague-ridden period that Mr Willet appeared one morning with his hand heavily swaddled in strips of shirt-tail.

'We 'ad a very rough night, miss, very rough! Very rough indeed!' he said in reply to my inquiries. 'That Arthur Coggs, miss, is nothing more than a crying disgrace to Fairacre.'

It had all begun, evidently, at Caxley during the dinner hour. It was market day, and a member of one of the more rabid and obscure evangelical sects had set up his rostrum between a fishmonger with lungs of brass, and a purple-faced gentleman who threatened to smash up teapots and repair them again, with the aid of the miraculous paste which he held in his hand.

When twelve o'clock struck, Mr Willet told me, 'This 'ere 'eathen-jeUy was as hoarse as a crow and took his tracts and that round to the building site where Arthur Coggs and his mates had just knocked off They was setting about on wheelbarrows and such, having their grub.'

So blood-curdling, evidently, were the ''eathen-jelly's' descriptions of the after-life that they could confidently look forward to, that Arthur was seriously perturbed. Early memories of his stern old father, who had held much the same beliefs as the earnest soul before him, came flooding back, and he resolved in a flash to give up drinking, swearing, wife-and-child beating, and to become an example of right-living to all Fairacre.

During the afternoon, as he stacked bricks in a leisurely way, he decided that his new life might profitably begin on the morrow. This evening he would have a farewell round of drinks with his cronies at 'The Beetle and Wedge,' and tell them of his changed ways. Who knows, he might even persuade some of those lost, black sheep to return to the fold with him?

He was, of course, chipped unmercifully by the hardened sinners in the pub that night. Spirits were high, language ripe and fruity, and beer flowed more generously than usual, as 'This was poor old Arthur's last drink!' By closing-time Arthur was decidedly drunk, and inflamed with his mission for reclaiming lost souls.

'You better save old Wilier,' suggested one boisterous reveller, as they approached the Willets' prim cottage.

Mr and Mrs Willet had been in what Mr Willet called 'a lovely sleep,' when the rumpus began. Afire with good works, Arthur belaboured the paint-encrusted knocker, with all the might of the righteous. His companions were divided between mirth and shame. Some egged him on, while the more sober did their best to get him away from the door.

'What the Hanover!' said Mr Willet, creaking out of bed. He leant out of the window.

'Get off home! Waking up sleeping folks! Get off with you!'

'You come on down!' rejoined Arthur, 'I got something to ask you urgent!'

Mr Willet pulled on his socks, using language that Mrs Willet had never heard him use before in all their twenty-eight years of married life and regular church-going. She followed him timidly down to the last few steps of the box staircase, holding the door at the bottom open a chink to see that no harm came to her husband.

'Well, what is it?' asked Mr Willet testily, as he unbolted the front door. The cat, so recently put out, now streaked in, with a cry of alarm, followed by Arthur Coggs.

His companions melted rapidly away into the darkness. It appeared to them that Mr Willet, standing there in his billowing flannel shirt that served him by night and day for six days of the week, and with his sturdy legs bristling like gooseberries in the night air, could well cope alone with his visitor.

Arthur came very close to Mr Willet and scrutinized his unwelcoming visage.

'Mr Willet,' he said with something between a sob and a hiccup, 'I got something to ask you.'

'Well, git on with it,' said Mr Willet sharply. The draught from the door was cruel. Arthur Coggs looked behind him furtively, then advanced another step.

'Willet, are you saved?' he pleaded earnestly.

Mr Willet's patience snapped at this insult to as steady-going a churchman as the village boasted.

'Saved?' he echoed. 'I'm a durn sight more saved than you are, you gobbering, great fool!' And he attempted to push Arthur through the door. But, with the strength of one who burns with nine pints of beer and religious convictions, Arthur thrust him aside, closed the door with a backward kick, and came further into the room. He leant heavily on the table and looked across at the incensed Mr Willet.

'But 'ave you seen the light?' he persisted. 'Do your limbs tremble when you think of what's to come?'

Mr Willet's limbs were trembling enough, as it was, with cold and fury. He opened his mouth to speak, but was shouted down.

'Gird on your armour, Willet!' bellowed Arthur, his breath coming in beery waves across the table. He brandished his arms wildly, knocking down a very old fly-paper, that fell glutinously across the red serge tablecloth.

'Gird on your sword! Gird on your 'elmet, Willet!' His eye lit upon two stuffed owls that dominated the dresser by the fire-place. Carefully he lifted the heavy glass cover from them, and, with a glad cry, dropped it over his own head. The stuffed owls swayed on their dead branch, and Mrs Willet gave a little wail, and came down the last three stairs.

Like some enormous goldfish Arthur rounded on her, eyes gleaming through the cover.

'You saved?' he bellowed suspiciously to the newcomer, steaming up the glass as he spoke.

'Yes, thank you,' murmured Mrs Willet faintly, shrinking behind her husband.

'Then put on your 'elmet,' advised Arthur, tapping the glass by his right ear. 'Gird your loins——!'

''Ere, that's enough of that!' shouted Mr Willet, enraged. He caught hold of the dome above Arthur's shoulders and attempted to force it off; but so heavy was it, and so much taller was his visitor, that he found it impossible to accomplish.

'Sit you down, will 'ee?' screamed Mr Willet, giving the glass a vicious slap and Mr Coggs a most unorthodox blow in the stomach. Arthur folded up neatly and sat, winded, on the horsehair sofa.

Speechless with fury Mr Willet pulled the cover off and handed it to his wife, who tiptoed across the room and replaced it lovingly over the owls.

'If I wasn't in me night-shirt,' said Mr Willet wrathfully, 'I'd 'old your fat 'ead under the pump! You git off home to your poor wife!'

Arthur's militant spirit had evaporated suddenly, and at the mention of his wife a maudlin smile curved his moist mouth.

'Me poor wife!' he repeated, and sat considering this for a full minute. 'Me
only
wife,' he said, looking up in some surprise. He lurched to his feet and caught Mr Willet by the neck of his shirt.

'And do you know what?' he boomed, his face thrust close to his host's, 'she ain't saved, poor weasel! Me
only
wife, and she ain't saved!'

Mr Willet broke away and flung open the door.

'Then you can dam' well clear off 'ome and save her! Coming in 'ere kicking up like this! Be off with you, Arthur Coggs!'

With inexpressible dignity Arthur drew himself up and crossed the threshold.

'I 'opes,' he said coldly, swaying on the doorstep, 'that I knows when I'm not welcome. Arthur Coggs ain't the sort that pushes in where 'e's not wanted!'

And with a shattering hiccup, he passed out into the night.

This dreadful scene had direct repercussions on our school life, for Joseph Coggs was absent the next morning, spoiling the week's record of attendance for the infants' room. 'Me dad overdone it,' he explained in the afternoon, 'and we was all late up.'

Worse still, Mr Willet had been 'so shook up by the rough night' that he cut his thumb badly as he was opening a tin of baked beans for breakfast and, as I have told, had to attend to his school duties with a heavily-bandaged hand for the rest of the week.

So discouraged was Arthur Coggs by the unpopularity of his mission work, that he lapsed into his normal regrettable ways, much to the relief of the whole village.

11. The New Teacher

T
HERE
were only three applicants for the post advertised at Fairacre School, although the advertisement had appeared in both
The Teachers' World
and
The Times Educational Supplement
for several weeks.

The vicar had called a managers' meeting to interview the three applicants on a Thursday afternoon, late in January. It was to be held at two-thirty in the vicar's dining-room, and I was invited to be present. I appreciated this courtesy, which is not always extended to the headmaster or headmistress when new staff is being appointed, and arranged with Mrs Finch-Edwards a combined crayoning class of the whole school. As an added incentive to good behaviour I produced a box of small silver stars to be gummed on the best work, and from the children's rapt expressions when I told them of these joys I fully expected that Mrs Finch-Edwards would have a peaceful afternoon while I was at the vicarage.