(2/20) Village Diary (17 page)

'And take your rubbish with you,' shouted Jim Wakes, who had just glimpsed his wife at the back door, and decided he must put on a more masterful display. The bucket sailed over the hedge, landing with a clatter among the squawking hens. Jim Waites saw the flutter of Mrs Coggs' crumpled skirt among the flying wings.

'Got your Leghorn there safely, Mrs Coggs?' he bellowed mischievously.

'Yes, thank you,' said Mrs Coggs timidly.

'You keep your trap shut!' growled her husband furiously, and stumped towards the kitchen door.

The Coggs entered together. The kettle had boiled over. The primus poured forth a hissing cloud of noxious paraffin vapour. Joseph Coggs stood by the table, his fist inside the cereal packet. He watched his father stamp blackly up the stairs.

'Where's dad bin?' he asked his grim-faced mother.

'Making a fool of himself,' said she, giving herself the satisfaction of raising her voice so that it could be clearly heard above. It was one of her rare moments of triumph.

The first Saturday in July was set aside for Fairacre's combined Sunday School and Choir Outing, as usual. Miss Clare was unable to come with us this year as she had promised to go with her sister to visit an old friend, who had come from Scotland to spend a few days in the neighbourhood.

The vicar fluttered round the two coaches, which were drawn up in front of the church, like a mother-hen with straying chicks. Mrs Pringle, swollen with majesty as head-counter-for-the-day, had taken up her stance at the top of the steps inside the coach, and seriously impeded the entrances and exits of the party.

'If,' she boomed heavily, the cherries on her straw hat trembling, 'you was to sit quiet and steady in your own seats, it would be an insistence to me counting.' This reproof was ignored, as squeaking children changed places, excited parents bobbed up and down to put things on the rack, and relatives and well-wishers from the other coach constantly appeared, vanished, reappeared, and generally made themselves as ubiquitous as possible. As Mrs Partridge had foreseen, when bestowing this office on Mrs Pringle, it was going to keep that lady very busy.

Mr Mawne, looking vaguely about him, was the last to appear, and Mrs Partridge led him triumphantly along our crowded coach to the empty seat beside me. The hum of noisy chattering stopped suddenly, a pregnant silence taking its place, while knowing looks and nudges were exchanged.

'There we are!' said Mrs Partridge in the comforting tone of one returning a lost baby to its mother. It says much for civilization that Mr Mawne and I were capable of greeting each other with smiles, under such provocation.

'Thirty-two!' bellowed Mrs Pringle from the front. 'Thirty-two! Right?' she poked her head out of the door to shout this to the vicar, who stood on the steps of the coach in front.

`It should be thirty-three, dear Mrs Pringle!' the vicar's pulpit-voice fluted back.

A hubbub of counting began in our coach, half the travellers standing up, and the other half begging them to sit down. The dm was appalling.

'I makes it thirty-one now!' said Mr Willet in a desperate tone. He looked uncomfortably spruce in his Sunday dark-blue serge, and his face shone red above a tight white collar.

'I was on the floor,' said a husky voice, and Joseph Coggs emerged from beneath a seat, wiping his filthy hands on the front of his best jersey.

'Thirty-two!' boomed Mrs Pringle again, with awful finality. I wondered if it would be engraved on her heart when she died, and if so, would it be in letters or figures? This idle fancy was interrupted by Mr Mawne saying firmly: 'You have forgotten yourself, Mrs Pringle. Thirty-two—and you make thirty-three!'

Sourly Mrs Pringle intimated that this was, in fact, the case, waved approval to the vicar, and then puffed her way down the aisle to the seat behind Mr Mawne and me. To rousing cheers the party set off to Barrisford.

Mr Mawne had an ill-assorted collection of luggage with him, for a day's outing. Three books, in an insecure strap, he put up on the rack, together with a small fishing net, and a rather messy packet, in greaseproof paper, which presumably held his lunch, and a very large green apple, obviously intended by the Almighty for baking, served with plenty of brown sugar and cream.

His magnificent camera, housed in a leather case which gleamed like a horse chestnut, he held carefully on his thin knees, occasionally whizzing the strap round and round, in an absent-minded fashion, perilously near my face.

For the first part of the journey he seemed content to gaze about him silently, but after we had stopped for coffee at a roadside cafe and resumed our seats, he became quite talkative. Mrs Pringle leant forward behind us, the better to hear the conversation.

'Do you go out much in the evenings?' asked Mr Mawne politely. 'Or do you have school work—marking, and so on—to occupy you?'

I told him that I usually spent a little time on school affairs, chiefly correspondence with the local education office, ordering new stock, checking school accounts and so on, but that otherwise household matters and the garden filled up most of my time.

'And I read a lot,' I added.

'Excellent, excellent!' said he, 'but surely you find your life a little lonely at times?'

I was conscious of Mrs Pringle's heightened interest behind me. I was obliged to tell Mr Mawne, quite truthfully, that I had never felt lonely in my life.

'It seems, if I may say so, a
very—a—restricted
life, for a woman. Particularly an attractive woman.' He essayed a small bow, but was somewhat impeded by the camera. Mrs Pringle's breathing became more marked by my left ear.

'I can assure you,' I said, acknowledging the compliment with a polite smile, 'that it's a very full life. Too full at times. The days don't seem long enough.'

Mr Mawne dropped his eyes to his lap, and spoke sadly.

'I find them too long, I'm afraid. Particularly cold, long summer evenings.'

By this time Mrs Pringle's face was almost between our heads, and I could see the agitated cherries from the corner of my eye. Ignoring the pathos of poor Mr Mawne's tone, I hurled myself into an over-bright description of making jam on just such a cold, long summer evening as Mr Mawne disliked, steering erratically, and perhaps a trifle hysterically from the particular to the general, while Mrs Pringle's breathing stirred the hair on my neck.

When at last I paused for breath, Mr Mawne gave me a gentle, sad smile.

'You are very lucky,' he said slowly. 'I think, perhaps, a man needs companionship more than a woman does.' He relapsed into dreamy silence, and we both watched the outskirts of Barrisford rushing past the windows.

Mrs Pringle released the iron grip she had held on the back of our seat, and, well content with her eavesdropping, settled her bulk back on her own cushions, and gave a gusty sigh.

To my relief and, no doubt, to Mrs Pringle's disappointment, Mr Mawne bade me a kindly farewell at Barrisford and set off, with brisk, purposeful strides, along the beach, to some far distant rocks which were awash with a lazy tide. The children rushed seawards whilst we older Fairacre folk settled ourselves on the warm sand, and screwing up our eyes against the dazzle, watched the sea-gulls swooping and crying in the vivid blue sky.

Mrs Moffat watched Linda setting off to the water, clad in a dashing yellow sun-suit of her making, then sat herself down beside me. She obviously had something of importance to say.

'Do you mind?' she began. 'I wanted to speak to you on the coach, but I didn't like to interrupt your conversation with Mr Mawne. He looked so happy.' This was all very hard to bear, I thought, and could only hope that the recording angel was ready, with pencil, to note with what fortitude and long-suffering I was enduring these mortifications.

'I wanted to thank you for sending your friend to me. She's introduced several more people from Bent, and Hilda and I are making nearly a dozen costumes for the pageant.'

I said that that was wonderful, and did Hilda—Mrs Finch-Edwards—find she could manage this work with the baby?

'She's marvellous!' said Mrs Moffat with fervour. 'She's borrowed dozens of books about costume from the County Library, and Mrs Bond who is in charge of the organizing of the pageant is coming over to see us both next week to see how we're getting on. The costumes must be historically correct, of course. It's fascinating work.'

I asked her if Amy had been able yet to introduce them both to the film producer.

'Not yet,' she replied, 'but I believe Mrs Bond knows him wed. She may ted us more when we see her.'

She rose in answer to a distant shout from her daughter, who was gazing, fascinated, at something in the surf that swirled about her ankles.

I leant back against a sunny breakwater, and dozed off.

'Our Mr Edward' at Bunce's, the famous tea shop, was elegant in a light fawn worsted suit, exquisitely cut. He bowed us to our tables in an upper room, and personally supervised the serving of delicious ham and salad, swooping round with plates ranged up his arm. Mr Mawne did not appear at tea, but we found him when we returned to the coach, busily making notes in the margin of one of his three books. It was, I saw, a book about birds. His face was bright pink with the sunshine and salt air, and he greeted me almost boisterously. I was glad to see that his spirits had revived.

Mrs Pringle bared her teeth at us in a ghastly, sickly leer as she sidled by to her place.

'Now you two will be all right,' she said, as though bestowing a blessing on a bridal pair. Mr Mawne appeared not to hear, and continued with his animated account of the purple sandpiper.

'I knew it!' he said emphatically, slapping his book gaily. 'When I heard that Barrisford was the place, I thought, "Now's my chance!'"

Mrs Pringle, catching the last few words, inclined the cherries a little nearer.

'I saw quite a dozen sandpipers—the
purple
sandpiper—' he added, peering anxiously into my face. 'There are a number of sandpipers, you know.'

I went into a pleasant trance while he rattled on. 'The purple sandpiper,' I said silently to myself, 'and the
lesser
sandpiper, and the
crested
sandpiper, and the
continental
sandpiper, and, of course, the
English speaking
sandpiper...'

The coach roared on, and we must have been half-way to Fairacre before he finished, triumphantly.

'And I've taken twenty-three photographs, both wading and on the wing, so I've ready accomplished more than I set out to do today! I shad set this fellow Huggett to rights!' Here he slapped the book again.

'A pompous ass! We were at school together, and what he knows about the purple sandpiper could be written on a pin head!'

And with this charitable remark he settled back with the evening paper, and read, with the closest attention, a very sordid account of a young girl drug-addict who had been found murdered on one of the ugliest divans ever to find its way into the photographs of the evening press.

The Monday following an outing often brings some absentees from school, and today was no exception. The twins, Helen and Diana, were reported to have nettlerash and colds—which sound suspiciously like chicken-pox to Miss Clare and me. Several others look decidedly mopey, and Ernest, in my room, has spent most of his school day rubbing his back against the desk behind him, in order to gain relief from 'an itching sunburn, miss, done Saturday.'

Miss Clare confessed over her morning tea that it was a relief not to have the twins in her classroom.

'There they sit,' said she sadly, 'breathing away through their mouths, eyes glazed, and nothing in their heads after five terms! They still choose a penny instead of sixpence, because it's bigger—although I've put out six pennies for sixpence, and explained it time and time again.'

I sympathized with her.

'And, mark my words,' continued their far-seeing teacher, 'they'll both have anything up to six children apiece, and as dull as they are themselves! Just you wait and see!'

In the evening I drove Mrs Annett to Springbourne to see if Minnie Pringle would come daily to Beech Green school-house when Mrs Annett is confined.

'There just seems to be no one else to ask,' she said as we wound along the narrow lane from Fairacre. 'There are no nice spare women these days—no kind single aunts to step into the breach, and I've no sisters who might spare a few days.'

She looked rosy and cheerful despite it ad, and trotted very nimbly up the brick path to the thatched cottage which housed Minnie, her three illegitimate children and her virago of a mother. I drove up the cart track, just off the narrow road, to wait till the business was over.

It was an oppressive evening, with a stillness that held the threat of thunder. The trees were beginning to look over-heavy, and shabby, and, in the field beside the car, there spread into the hazy distance, the suden khaki shade of July wheat.

It was so quiet that small sounds, usually unheard, were quite clear. A dead bramble leaf, swinging brown and brittle on a thread nearby, cracked dryly as it touched a twig. A pigeon rocketed over the hedge, and clapped its wings shut, with the hollow, bony snap of a closing fan.

I felt as though I had been worlds away by the time Mrs Annett returned to the car, ad her arrangements as satisfactorily made as would ever be possible with such a scatter-brained creature as Minnie Pringle. We drove home together under the lowering sky, and were safely indoors before the storm broke.

A spell of fine weather, following the storm, has kept us all happy and indolent in the village. Apart from the growing frenzy of pageant preparations—the great day is only a few weeks distant—everyone agrees that it is too hot to do any gardening, or to go shopping in Caxley, or to wash the blankets, or to do the outside painting, or, in fact, to cope with any of the jobs which we have been postponing for weeks 'until we get a fine spell.'

My garden is looking lovely, and the new potatoes and peas are at their best. There is nothing I enjoy more than turning up a root of pale golden potatoes, in the warm crumbly earth, secure in the knowledge that treasure so freshly dug will mean easy skinning.