(2/20) Village Diary (19 page)

***

I drove through squelching lanes to Beech Green school-house yesterday to have tea with the Annetts. They are not going away this summer, as the baby is due to arrive next week.

Mr Annett was in the throes of revising his time-table. His farming project is going wed, but the difficulties in arranging other school activities are great.

'I shall have a hundred and forty next term,' he said, 'from five to fifteen—and only four teachers for the lot.'

I knew that Miss Young took the infants' class and that it involved teaching thirt-yodd infants aged from five to eight. Miss Hodge had the juniors, from eight to eleven, which meant that they took the eleven-plus examination from her room. Mr Hopgood and Mr Annett took the older boys and girls, having about forty in each class. Several neighbouring schools—mine included—send their children on to Beech Green School, at the age of eleven, so that the top two classes are usually large and the children do not know each other as wed as do those in the lower two classes.

'It's arranging games that is giving me a headache,' confessed Mr Annett, running his fingers through his hair. 'Miss Young can take netball with the girls on Wednesday afternoon, while I take football with the boys from the top two classes, but that means we have about forty apiece to cope with, and it's too much. It means that Miss Young has three netball games to supervise, and I have two football teams. It also means that Hopgood has to go into the junior room to free Miss Hodge who takes the infants while Miss Young's out, and frankly, Hopgood's no earthly good with young children.'

'Can't he take the football?' I suggested.

'Got a gammy leg,' said Mr Annett, running an ink-stained finger round the inside of a nice white collar. 'Can you wonder,' he went on, 'that I've had two visits from parents who are trying to get their children accepted at that new secondary modern school this side of Caxley? In theory we're offering their children the same education—but are we? Here I have forty children, from thirteen to fifteen in my class, ranging from complete duffers to bright ones. True the girls have a day at the cookery and housewifery centre once a week, and the boys have a day at carpentry. But what facilities have I got here at Beech Green to offer them, compared with the schools in Caxley?

'The parents know as well as I do that there are two, if not three, streams there, and the bright ones will get the chance to get along at their own pace, instead of being held back by the dim-wits. They will have a gymnasium, a metal-work room, a woodwork room, decent sanitation—and what's more, properly-trained specialist teachers to take them in different subjects—not a poor old hack like me who has to teach everything, in between filling in the forms and interviewing the hundred and one caders who come during the day.'

I protested that he was doing a difficult job very wed.

'But that's not enough,' said he vehemently, making the teacups jump as he banged a bony fist on the table. 'I often think the children would be better off staying in their own small schools. Take Springbourne, that closed recently. Miss Davis's fifteen children come here now; the school-house has been sold to somebody "up-the-atomic," and I see that the school itself is for sale, advertised in this week's
Caxley Chronicle
as "a commodious building suitable for conversion."'

'But it would have cost an enormous amount to repair properly—and for fifteen children-' I began.

'But
why
for fifteen children?' argued Mr Annett. 'I know as wed as you do that a one-teacher school is uneconomic, but there were two good classrooms there, and a school-house. Why not let dear old Miss Davis stay on, give her an assistant for the infants, and take some of the children who now burst our walls apart, over there to make up a worth-while little two-class school? As it is, I have ten children from Badger's End, only a stone's throw from Springbourne School, and there are a dozen council houses just finished on the other side—I expect ad the children there will come driving gaily past empty little Springbourne School and squash in here with all the rest.'

Mr Annett sounded so bitter that I felt quite guilty when I remembered that three of my old pupils would be adding to the congestion at Beech Green next term. Mrs Annett tactfully changed the subject by asking me if I would like to see the baby's layette, and thankfully we climbed the stairs to happier things, leaving Mr Annett to tear himself to shreds over the injustices of present-day rural education.

Tibby has become a renowned mouse and rat catcher, doubtless an admirable trait in a country cat, but one which gives me many a pang, for rats and mice I just cannot endure, and Tibby insists on dragging home her dead trophies to display proudly before me.

There is something about rodents—possibly their long, ghastly, naked tads—which fills me with the deepest revulsion, and I am quite unable to cope with these dreadful offerings which Tibby lays at my door. Imagine, then, my horror when, on reaching down for a saucepan from the cupboard under the sink, a
live
rat bolted across the kitchen. Obviously the cat had let it escape and being unable to get it out from its retreat, had sauntered off in search of further prey. I gave a yelp and fled upstairs.

After a few minutes' shuddering I tried to decide how on earth I could get rid of the wretched thing. To touch it at all-let alone kill it—was beyond me, and I was just working out a plan whereby I would go out of the front door, open the kitchen one, and pray that it made its own way out, when I heard the oil van stop outside.

Leonard, who drives it, was one of my pupils when I first came to Fairacre. A weakly, adenoidal boy, and not over-bright, he appeared, on this occasion, to have the attributes of Apollo himself.

'Leonard!' I called in quavering tones, from the bedroom window. He looked dimly about him, at ground floor level, until I was forced to cad:

'I'm upstairs, Leonard!' His gaze slowly travelled upward.

'Never saw you, miss!' he responded. 'Want anything?'

'The usual gallon,' I answered, 'and a dozen matches—not those dreadful things I had last time, but Bryant and May's.' He began to open the van doors at the back, as I screwed up my courage to ask for help.

'And Leonard——' I pleaded, 'could you possibly see to a rat that's in my kitchen? Get rid of it for me somehow?' I very nearly added, so low was my morale, that I was sorry that I had kept him in so often as a child, but a teacher's blood, even though at its lowest ebb, still trickled in my veins, and I forbore.

Leonard became positively brisk. His eye lit up and his manner became energetic.

'Got a stick?' he asked, advancing swiftly up the path.

'In the hall—' I faltered, and sat on the bed with my fingers in my ears as the first bloodcurdling whacks began.

Five minutes latex Leonard appeared underneath my bedroom window.

'"E's finished!' he said with great zest, 'I've chucked him out the back-over the far ditch. Made a bit of a mess, but I've mopped up with a bit of old cloth!'

Trying not to let my horror at these words show in my face, I thanked him deeply.

'That's all right, miss. I likes a bash at a rat!' said my bloodthirsty ex-pupil. I thought wryly of the numberless talks I had given the children on kindness to animals—but who was I to criticize? He waved good-bye, climbed into the rickety van, and roared off.

Shaking, I crept down to the scene of carnage. It was all very quiet. A new tea-cloth, gruesomely stained, was draped along the sink. Shuddering, I picked it off with the fire-tongs and dropped it in the dust-bin. It seemed a small price to pay for Leonard's services.

Throughout the rest of the day I found I had a marked aversion to opening cupboards and even drawers, and I made a mental note to be less severe with the children, in future, when they fussed about wasps, gnats and so on in school.

I decided that an early bath and bed would be a good idea, having sampled a radio play, so obscure and so full of people with dreadful allegorical names like Mr Striving and Lady Haughtyblood as to drive one mad.

The kitchen is also the bathroom at the school-house. The rain-water is tipped, bucket by bucket, into an electric copper and while it heats, I spread a bath-mat, fetch the zinc bath that hangs in the back porch and pour in two buckets of cold rain-water in readiness. There are quite a few preparations to make for a rain-water bath—including skimming out a few leaves—but the result is wed worth it, and the soft scented water ready gets one clean.

The telephone rang as I was soaking, but I ignored it. At ten o'clock I was in bed, and at half-past ten, asleep. To my alarm, the telephone rang shrilly again, in the middle of the night—or so it seemed to my befuddled brain, as I crossly grabbed my dressing-gown, and groped downstairs. I managed to get one arm in a sleeve on the way. The rest trailed behind.

'Hello, hello!' said an exuberant voice, 'George Annett here. Thought you'd like to know that Isobel's had a boy. Five pounds!'

I said that that was wonderful and how were they both? There was a cruel draught under the door and my feet were frozen. I attempted to put my other arm in the second sleeve behind my back, found the sleeve was inside out, and gently put the receiver down, in order to arrange myself.

'Hi!' said an alarmed voice. 'Have you rung off? What's that click? You there?'

I put my mouth down to the table and spoke with what patience I could muster with both arms behind me, and my nightclothes twisted all round, and no shoes on, at a quarter to twelve at night.

'Yes, I'm here!'

'We're so pleased about it being a boy. Isn't it amazing? We wanted a boy, you see. And five pounds! Pretty good for a first attempt, isn't it? It's got a lot of black hair—doesn't seem to grow any particular way. Can't think how we'll part it!' Mr Annett sounded concerned. With a superhuman effort I wrenched my second sleeve out, to a nasty snapping of stitches, and inserted my second arm.

'What are you going to call him?' I asked.

'Well, my father's name was Oswald—' began Mr Annett, and rattled gaily on, as I hitched my frozen feet on the chair rail out of the draught, and made fruitless efforts to wrap them in the bottom of my dressing-gown.

At last the voice slowed down. The clock stood at midnight, and pleased though I was to hear such very good news, my bed called me seductively.

'Now you must go to bed,' I said to Mr Annett. 'You must be very tired after all this excitement.'

'Funnily enough,' said the tireless fellow, 'I feel fine. I'm just going to ring one or two more friends—I've done the relatives!'

Feeling that I should drop asleep at the table if I stayed there one minute more, I promised to come and see Isobel and the baby in a day or two's time, rang off firmly, and took my icy feet to bed.

'I hope to goodness they think of something better than Oswald,' I thought to myself, as I crept into bed. 'Such a pursed-lips-and-Adam's-appley sort of name.' I racked my brain to think why I disliked it so. The only Oswald I could think of was an old friend, of whom I have always been very fond, a man of great charm and vivacity, but even this fact could not reconcile me to the name.

I heard St Patrick's clock strike two before I finally fell asleep.

On the day of the pageant, I woke to hear the rain gurgling merrily down the pipe from the gutter to the rain-water butt, by the back door. Large puddles lay in the hollows of our uneven playground, and Tibby, rushing into the kitchen, shook drops disdainfully from her paws, and mewed her complaints.

We were due to start off for Branscombe Castle at eleven sharp. The coach was to appear outside the church wed before that time, and Mrs Partridge had impressed upon us the great need for punctuality.

'And bring packed lunch,' she had said at the end of our last rehearsal, 'and don't let the children have anything too rich,
please?

Our costumes had been packed the night before in two enormous wicker hampers, one labelled a. britons and the other
ROMANS
. Mrs Moffat kept guard over these. Mrs Finch-Edwards was coming over later when she had settled her young daughter after lunch.

By ten o'clock the rain was getting lighter, though an unpleasantly chilly wind still blew. I could see from my bedroom window, as I was dressing, little knots of women and children converging upon the church. The coach arrived soon after.

By the time the excited mothers and children had sorted themselves out, there seemed to be remarkably little space left for the properties. The two hampers were piled, one on top of the other, at the front of the coach, but we had a collection of ungainly props,' including a squat pouffe, which, covered with grey crayon paper (from the school cupboard), represented a boulder on which Mrs Pringle was to be seated by the fire. Worse still was a stuffed deer, which was to be slung on a pole and brought in by the Ancient Briton hunters. No one who has not attempted to travel in a modern coach with a stuffed deer can have any idea how much room the animal needs. We found that it was too long to be propped up on end. It was too fat to go on the rack. Its rigid legs were an insuperable obstacle, and it was only by lodging the poor thing athwart the back of one seat, with its front legs down one side and its rear ones down the other, that we got it in at all.

The younger children were scared of it—as well they might be, for its glass eyes had not been set in quite straight and it had the most horrific and malignant squint.

A strong smell of raw fish pervaded the coach as we drove the ten miles to Branscombe Castle. This came from a brown-paper bag, of which I had unhappy charge, and was given off by a pound of sprats, due to be cooked at the Ancient Britons' camp-fire. There had been a certain amount of argument as to the menu and cooking facilities of Ancient Britons.

'A big black cauldron, surely,' someone had suggested. 'Fixed on a tripod.'

Mrs Willet had offered her coal scuttle, which, she assured us, was just like a cauldron, and Caxley had had it when the Methodist witches did
Macbeth
last autumn.