(2/20) Village Diary (18 page)

The peas have done well, and I sit on the lawn shelling them for my supper, and enjoying the scent of a freshly popped pod, packed with fat moist peas, as much as the delicious eating later.

The new teacher, who has been appointed straight from college to take up her post in the infants' room here next term, called to see us yesterday. Her name is Hilary Jackson, and she is nearly twenty-one. She seemed a conscientious, rather earnest young woman, squarish in build, with a shaggy hair-cut and horn-rimmed glasses. She was dressed in a crumpled blouse and a gathered skirt of glazed chintz, and she wore aggressively tough sandals.

I hope she settles down with us, but at the moment she is well above all our heads.

'Have you read
A Little Child's Approach to Relativity?
' she asked me. I admitted that, so far, I had not met this work.

'But you should!' she insisted, looking rather shocked. 'It's the text of the Heslop-Erchsteiner-Cod lectures, which he gave last autumn.'

'Who?' I asked, with genuine interest.

'Why, Professor Emil Gascoigne,' she replied, eyes wide behind the glasses. 'He gave the Heslop-Erchsteiner-Cod series at Minnesota—no, I'm wrong!' She stopped, appalled at her own mistake, and stared fiercely at Ernest and Patrick in the front desk, who were supposed to be pasting a geometrical pattern, but had done very little, I noticed, preferring to read one of Mrs Waites' magazines which had been spread on their desk lid to catch the paste drops.

'Could it be Minneapolis?' she asked, turning a distraught face to me.

'Or Minnehaha perhaps,' I returned, beginning to get a little tired of it all, in this heat.

'Oh no!' she assured me earnestly, 'not Minnehaha. I think you're confusing it with Longfellow.'

Suitably and deservedly crushed, I bore her off to Miss Clare's room, where her new class surveyed her, round-eyed.

Miss Clare greeted her very kindly and took her to the large cupboard in the corner to show her the number apparatus.

'But surely,' I heard Miss Jackson remark, in ringing tones, as I returned to my own class, 'those out-of-date old bead frames aren't
still
in use. Child psychologists
everywhere
have agreed for
years,
that the inch-cube is the only possible medium for basic number...'

I left them to it, closed the dividing door gently behind me and walked round my own desks, where the children snipped and pasted with unusual industry now that my eye was upon them.

The reason for Ernest and Patrick's paucity of work was readily apparent when I saw the page at which Mrs Waites' favourite weekly was opened. Scissors held idly in their laps, mouths open and eyes bursting from their heads, they sat engrossed—Ernest in an article headed 'How To Wean Baby,' from which no intimate details were spared, and Patrick in an outspoken dissertation on family-planning, on the opposite page.

The vicar called in, as is his custom on a Friday afternoon, and after his talk with the children, asked me if I thought that Mrs Moffat would be able to give Miss Jackson accommodation next term, as she had once done for Mrs Annett, then Miss Gray.

I knew that she was now so busy with her needlework that the chances were slight. The spare room, which had been Miss Gray's, was an enchanting mass of rich costumes, at the moment, in preparation for the pageant, but after that great day, it was doubtful if Mrs Moffat would be any less busy, for her name, as an excellent and imaginative dressmaker, was getting widely known, thanks to Amy's recommendation.

We discussed again the difficulties of obtaining suitable lodgings for young women in a village. The cottages are crowded, and often have no bathroom. The people with large houses, like the vicar, seem strangely averse to letting a room, and as most of them are elderly, it would not be easy for them or for their lodger. On the other hand, I sometimes think that perhaps this possibility never enters their heads. I have been present when the managers have met together, cudgelling their brains for somewhere to put an innocuous and respectable young woman—who would be delighted to do for herself, and quite probably be away every week-end—and have been amused to hear them suggesting that Mrs So-and-So (who has a husband, four children and no help whatsoever), might be delighted to let that little slip room of hers that looks out on to the wall of the village bakehouse; whilst large empty rooms in their own houses, inhabited by a moth or two and a stray mouse, cry out for a bit of fire and an airing.

There was no other hope but Mrs Moffat, as we both wed knew, and as the vicar's land old face began to pucker into ever-growing anxiety, I rose to the occasion and said that Miss Jackson could stay in my spare room for the time being, until she found somewhere that she ready liked. It is not an ideal arrangement, but it is the only way out of the difficulty; and the vicar, breathing relief and thanks, departed a much happier man.

As we suspected, it was chicken-pox which reared its ugly head just after the outing, and nearly half the school is down with it. Dr Martin, whom I met at the school gate, said that the attack was very mild.

'As I hope it is!' I rejoined, waving a hand to a bunch of my spotty pupils, playing near the church gates. 'What's the point of excluding them from school, if their mothers let them mix with all and sundry?'

'Won't hurt them,' responded Dr Martin, with that fine careless rapture with which so many present-day doctors dismiss children's infectious diseases. He drove off hastily, before the tart remarks that trembled on my tongue had time to fall.

It was the day after this encounter that Miss Clare and Arthur Coggs crossed swords. I had driven into Caxley during the dinner hour, to drop in some forms at the Education Office. Unfortunately I had forgotten that it was market day, and the town was jammed with traffic. Cattle vans jostled farmers' cars, while my battered little Austin tried to nose along in their wake. Country ladies, indistinguishable in their marketday uniforms of grey flannel suit, white blouse, marcasite clip, dark glasses and classic grey felt hat (jay's feather at side), gave tongue to each other across the traffic, and exchanged news of their families in tones which would have filled the Albert Hall comfortably.

The children were already in school when I returned. My pox-free few were busy with a spelling game, the infants with bricks and jig-saw puzzles. Miss Clare told me of her adventure as they worked.

We had sent Joseph Coggs home again, on his arrival at school that morning, for he was obviously suffering from chicken-pox. Arthur Coggs, who had elected to have the day off work, was furious about this, and had marched him up again for afternoon school, breathing fire and threats. School was compulsory, wasn't it? he had blustered at Miss Clare, the children, half-frightened, half-thrilled gazing on. Soon complained if the kid was kept away, that there office, and now here young Joe was packed off home. There was much more to the same effect, while poor Joe drooped beside him, shaken with fever and fear.

'Have you called in Dr Martin?' asked Miss Clare.

'No, nor shall I!' retorted Arthur. 'That kid's got nothing wrong with him, but a few gnat bites.'

He also said that Joe 'ate too rich,' added Miss Clare to me.

'Ha-ha!' I commented mirthlessly.

Miss Clare had then watched the tears pour hotly down Joe's flushed cheeks, and had taken decisive action.

'The child is ill and must have medical attention,' she said firmly. 'If you refuse to call in Dr Martin, I shall do so!' And grasping Joe's hand she walked swiftly to the school-house, followed by Arthur Coggs, bellowing and gesticulating. She adjured the child to he on the sofa, ignored Arthur's vociferous shoutings about a father's rights and what happened to kidnappers, and rang Dr Martin's house.

Luckily, he answered the telephone himself, heard the rumpus in the background, and came to the rescue within a few minutes. He had diagnosed chicken-pox, taken poor Joe's temperature, which now stood at 103°, and had told Arthur Coggs, in good round terms which had delighted and shocked Miss Clare, his opinion of him. He had now taken Arthur back to his cottage, keeping up a rapid fire of advice and threat of 'taking-it-to-the-police' under which the craven Arthur soon wilted, and was there now, seeing that a decent bed was prepared for his patient and that the parents knew what to do for him.

'Well done!' I said heartily to Miss Clare. 'I'd go over and see Joe. And then I think you'd better have a rest yourself after all that bother!'

'Nonsense!' said my assistant rebelliously. 'Stuff and nonsense! It's done me a world of good to have a battle with that wretched Arthur Coggs. And as for Dr Martin's language—!' Her old eyes sparkled at the recollection. 'It was quite wonderful! So fluent and so
really dreadful!
' Her voice was full of admiration and awe.

Within an hour Dr Martin returned, carried the now sleeping Joe wrapped in a rug, to his car, and settled him on the back seat. I had picked the finest roses I could find in my garden for Dr Martin, for I knew that roses were his first love.

'And the best one's for your button-hole,' I told him, fixing it through the car window. 'We can't thank you enough!'

'You're a good girl—despite your crotchety-old-maid ways,' retorted Dr Martin, blowing me a kiss as he drove slowly away.

'
Well!
' said an outraged boom behind me, and I turned to confront Mrs Pringle, purple with stupefaction. 'Such goings-on——!'

I concealed my mirth as best I could, and shook my head regretfully.

'I'm afraid Dr Martin is hopelessly susceptible!' I said. And assuming the air of a
femme fatale
I returned, in great good spirits, to the children.

Miss Clare's bouquet, on the last day of term, was even larger than Dr Martin's, for all the children had contributed from their gardens, and southernwood and lavender added their aromatic, spicy scent to that of the roses and carnations which formed the largest part of the massive bunch.

Joseph Coggs was not there, as he was still in the throes of chicken-pox, but Mrs Coggs had sent some madonna lilies to swell the bunch, and we recognized them as a silent tribute to her son's champion.

The schoolroom was very quiet when they had all gone. Bereft of pictures, piles of books, and flowers, it looked bare and forlorn. The floorboards sounded hollowly as I made my way to the door.

Mrs Pringle had told me that she would start 'that back-breaking scrubbing' the next day, so I locked the school door, admiring the soft, old green paint, so soon to be burnt off and replaced.

The sun scorched my back as I bent to the lock. Swinging the massive key round and round on my finger, I went to hang it up in its allotted place on the nad in the coal cedar.

Dazzled with sunshine I hummed my way back to the school-house. The swadows screamed excitedly round St Patrick's spire and seven glorious, golden weeks stretched ahead.

AUGUST

T
HE
first few days of the holiday were gloriously hot, but the weather broke during the first week in August and steady relentless rain has covered the country. I spent ten days with an old friend at the sea—luckily during the fine spell—and returned to Fairacre to find the garden sodden, and farmers beginning to look gloomily at their corn.

'It can't keep on at this rate,' I said to Mr Roberts, when I encountered him in the lane. 'It's much too heavy to last.'

'You'd be surprised!' he rejoined grimly, surveying his farmyard, which looked more like a lake. Rain drummed steadily on the corrugated-iron roof of the barn, and pattered on my umbrella. Little rivulets, carrying twigs and leaves, coursed down each side of the lane, and the heavy sky looked as though it held plenty of rain in reserve.

'Don't suppose it'd be fit for the pageant,' said Mrs Pringle, with gloomy relish. 'Muck things up a treat, this will. 'Twouldn't be safe to have the children running about the grounds at Branscombe Castle, in this lot—the river's fair rushing through, I'm told, and there's many a life been lost by that weir there.'

The pageant overshadows everything. Nothing is safe from the marauding hands of pageant-producers and actors. We are all busy sticking gummed labels on the undersides of old pieces of furniture, which have been requisitioned for the day, and our wardrobes have been ransacked—not only for fur for our own simple Ancient Britons' costumes—but for hats, cloaks, velvet jackets, feathers, jewels, buckles and belts for the rest of the county. I quite dread Amy's visits at the moment, as I see her predatory eye ranging round my house, and even over my person, for any little titbit that might further Bent's glory on the day of the pageant.

'You can't need that great pearl ring,' she insisted, on her last foray, eyes agleam. In vain to protest that it was a bridesmaid's present years ago, and that I was much attached to it. After five minutes of Amy's browbeating, I found myself taking it off and handing it over, having to content myself with awful threats if any ill befell it.

So it goes on ad over the county, and many an old friendship is cracking under the strain, I surmise.