(2/20) Village Diary (5 page)

Nevertheless, did manage to imbibe a glass of hot milk and two digestive biscuits, before going to bed, and felt very much better.

There appears to be no hope of getting a supply teacher while Mrs Annett is away. Mrs Finch-Edwards is fully occupied with her young baby and Miss Clare is nursing her sister, who is really very ill with this same wretched complaint.

Luckily, in a day or two, I felt perfectly fit again, and as there are so many absentees my class is not overwhelmingly large. The age range makes it rather difficult to choose a story that will interest them all, but the 'Ameliaranne' books are proving a great standby.

The
Caxley Chronicle
today carried an account of John Parr's engagement. As his fiancee is second cousin to a duke, the
Caxley Chronicle
has thrown poor John Parr to the lions with a casual 'who has always given generous support to the local branch of the League of Pity,' and concentrated on his bride-to-be's more glamorous connections. I foresee that Fairacre and particularly Mrs Pringle, will feel slighted.

Mrs Pringle's niece is doing her scatter-brained best to fill her aunt's place, but she is a sore trial. She has bright, rusty-red locks, very erratically cut, with no parting, and the back view of her head resembles a particularly tousled floor mop. Her eyes are of that very light blue, peculiar either to fanatics or feather-brained individuals, and her large mouth is curved in a constant mad grin. I don't mind admitting that I find her unnerving.

She wears a long, mauve hand-knitted woollen frock, which has been sketchily washed and pegged by the hem, so that it undulates in a remarkable fashion round her calves.

While I was looking out our morning hymn, before school, she dusted round me, and kept up a febrile chatter which I allowed to go in one ear and out of the other. However, she caught my attention suddenly by saying proudly: 'I've just had my third!' I had heard something about one moral slip, and had been inclined to take the usual tolerant village line, that it was regrettable, but might not perhaps be the girl's fault. When it comes to two, we villagers are not so sympathetic; and so, when Miss Pringle announced her third to me, I probably looked as taken aback as I felt.

'I said I've just had my third!' repeated the girl. I made no comment; and, probably, sensing from my lack of enthusiasm that all was not quite well, she added apologetically: `I can't think how it happened!'

Amy rang up 'for a cosy chat' last night, just as I was going to bed. James had been called away on urgent business (unspecified) which would keep him engaged until Sunday. Amy said that he hated going, and couldn't tell her much about it as it was 'top-level and frightfully hush-hush.' (What 'top-level-hush-hush' stuff a director of a cosmetic firm meddles in, is no affair of mine, but it doesn't stop me thinking.)

I told her about the 'flu and no supply teachers, quite innocently, and was amazed when she offered to come and help.

I had to ring the education office to get official consent, but as Amy has excellent qualifications, she was welcomed with open arms in this plague-stricken time.

She arrived in the luscious car, and I heard the children debating who it could belong to.

'That must be an inspector. Too posh for an ornery teacher. Look at Miss Read's car now!'

'More like the new head nurse—except there ain't no jars of head-stuffin the back.' (Lucidly Amy was out of earshot.)

It was very cheering to have her here and we both enjoyed working together. She will stay until the end of the week.

I was to have gone to tea at the vicarage today, but Mrs Partridge rang up at morning play-time to say that we must postpone our tea-party as poor Mr Lawn (Pawn? Prawn? Line crackling badly as the 'Beetle and Wedge' is having a telephone installed at the moment) has succumbed to prevailing sickness. I expressed sincere sympathy.

I had a Thurberesque conversation with the mad Miss Pringle after school, about the third child of shame, which is to be christened on Sunday.

'Mr Partridge's coming over to Springbourne. I told him when he brought the hymn list this morning, I thought of Lance-a-lot Drick, for the baby's name.'

'Drick?'

'Like Bogarde. Drick Bogarde. But vicar said Not-Too-Fanciful, but I think it's too much of a mouthful. So I said make it Huge and Call-it-a-Day.'

Much shaken I said Hugh was a good name, and gave her five shillings for the baby. I have no doubt that it will buy a purple lipstick for its mother.

It will be a relief to see Mrs Pringle's glum countenance back on Monday.

I drove to Caxley after school, and met Mrs Martin, our doctor's wife, coming out of Boots', and enquired after his health.

'He's been run off his feet, poor dear, and now he's gone down with this horrible 'flu himself.'

I said I was sorry and was he a good patient?

'A fiend incarnate!' his wife assured me solemnly. 'But he must be in a really bad way.' She looked furtively about her, came very close to me, and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. 'He's been driven to taking his own cough mixture! That'll show you how bad he's been! He's just sent me in for a bottle from Boots', that doesn't taste quite so evil!'

On Monday we were all back at our posts. Mrs Annett arrived swathed in rugs and was supported to her room by her attentive husband. She assured me, when he had departed, that she was as fit as a fiddle.

Mrs Pringle's outraged expression when she saw the state of her beloved stoves, was a real tonic.

'That Minnie Pringle!' she breathed menacingly. 'Blacklead and elbow-grease don't mean nothing to her!'

The weather had turned delightfully warm and springlike. The lilac buds in my garden are as fat as green peas, and crocuses, daffodds and tulips are pushing through. Even the grass is beginning to smell hopeful again, as one walks on it.

Mrs Annett and I celebrated this return of joy by taking the whole school out for a nature walk in the woods, at the foot of the downs. They belong to Mr Roberts, the farmer, who lives next door to the school and is one of its most energetic managers, and he lets us go there whenever we please. This is a great privilege, for, like most country schools, Fairacre has a small playground with a stony, uneven surface, which means that any really riotous games in this confined space lead to skinned knees and hands. We consider ourselves very lucky to be able to use Mr Roberts's woods, and his meadow too, and so enjoy a wider world now and again.

The frogspawn was rising in the pond near the 'Beetle and Wedge.' The boys were anxious to take off their shoes and socks and wade in to fetch some for the classroom; but knowing the collection of tins, pieces of bedstead and other household junk which litters the bottom, I forbade this project.

The woods were awe-inspiringly quiet. Even the children hushed their sing-song chatter as they scuffled along in the beech leaves. Signs of spring were everywhere. The honeysuckle is already in small leaf, the primrose plants are sturdy rosettes, and we saw several birds with dry grass or feathers in beak, and a speculative glint in the eye.

At the edge of the wood is a small field, which is one of my secret joys. It always looks lovely. At this time of year it has a soft dewy greyness, which the line of pewter-coloured willow trees, at its boundary, enhances. Today a wood-pigeon, as soft and opal as a London twilight, winged across, and made the picture unforgettable. I once saw this field at eight o'clock on a fine May morning, when it was gilded with buttercups. A light breeze shivered the young willow leaves, and everything vernal that Geoffrey Chaucer and Will Shakespeare ever wrote was caught alive here.

We let the children run, while we sat on a dry log and rested. Mrs Annett, with her gaze fixed bemusedly on a cluster of heart-shaped violet leaves between her brogues, told me, in a dreamy tone in keeping with this enchanted place, that she was to have a child in August.

I said how very pleased I was, and we continued to sit, propped together, on the dry log in comfortable silence, savouring the niceness of this most satisfying affair.

Joseph Coggs' discovery of a very dead grey squirrel and his request for a lend of my penknife' to cut off the poor creature's tail in order to claim a smiling, brought this idyll to a close. We returned in great good spirits to Fairacre School.

Although we had had quite a long walk I was amazed to see how fresh and lively the very young children were on our outing. The longer I teach, the more I am convinced that it is wrong for children in their first year at school to have to attend school for the whole day.

Perhaps, before long, morning school only for the five, and even six year olds, will be the order of the day, and I am sure it would be welcomed by mothers, teachers and children. Most children have a big adjustment to make when they start school. The numbers alone are tiring, and new surroundings, new voices and a new, and perhaps more rigid, discipline all make for strain.

Before he went to school, the child probably had a rest before or after lunch, when, even if he did not sleep, he had a quiet period, on his own, with his feet up. After his rest, during the afternoon, he had his walk, when all the pleasures and richness of the outdoor world impinged on his young mind.

In a small country school it is difficult to provide a rest-time after school dinner for these really small people. It is not surprising that they frequently nod off to sleep in the afternoon, and I for one am only too pleased to let them. A refreshing nap will do them far more good than making a batch of plasticine crumpet—enthralling though that may be with the aid of a ready sharp matchstick—and I am only sorry that I can't make them more comfortable, when I sec a tousled head resting on two fat arms on the unsympathetic hard wood of an ancient school desk.

A new chant to the psalms had us all bogged down, at church today, and I enjoyed watching the different methods of attack. My neighbour in the pew, Mr Lamb from the Post Office, preserved an affronted silence. Mrs Willet gobbled up three-quarters of each phrase on one uniform and neutral note, and then dragged out the last quarter in a nasal whine, somewhere near the printed notes. Mrs Pringle mooed slowly and heavily, a few beats behind the rest, but with an awful ponderous emphasis in the wrong places; while the vicar, with a sublime disregard for the organist's accompaniment, sang an entirely different chant altogether, and did it very well.

I drove to Caxley to have tea with Amy and James. She talked quite wistfully of her few days' teaching, and, I believe, would jump at the chance of coming again some time. She was perturbed about a rash which has come out on her face. I must confess that I could only see it when my eyes were two inches from her cheek. I suggested that the Caxley water which is villainously hard, might be responsible, and why didn't she use rainwater for a few days?

'Water?' screamed Amy. (If I had said vitriol, she couldn't have sounded more horrified.) Did I realize that she hadn't touched her face with
water
for over five years? Only the very blandest and most expensive complexion milk was dabbed on—with an upward movement—thrice daily, with an occasional application of an astringent lotion which was prepared in Bond Street to her own prescription. Her beauty specialist had forbidden—positively forbidden—the use of water on such a very sensitive skin.

I could only feel that layers of complexion milk over the years, had probably formed a light cheese over Amy's face, which accounted for the rash; but as I was eating her delicious sponge-cake at that moment, was obliged, in common courtesy, to keep these thoughts to myself.

I am now the somewhat bewildered possessor of an engaging kitten. It all began with Jimmy Waites asking if he could go home during the dinner hour to fetch two kittens.

'So as Linda can choose which one she likes,' he said. Mrs Moffat had asked if Linda might keep it at school during the afternoon, and return home, with the pet of her choice, in time for tea.

This all seemed very agreeable, and the infants were delighted to hear that they would be entertaining two kittens for the afternoon session, and spent most of the morning preparing the doll's cradle for these much more exciting occupants. The doll, a cherished Edwardian beauty, from the vicarage nursery, was propped up on the cupboard, and surveyed her wanton young masters and mistresses with a glassy stare.

Mrs Annett had the greatest difficulty in persuading the children to drink their morning milk, but finally discovered that they were all hoarding it for the kittens' dissipation later. At length a bottle was put up on the cupboard, beside the slighted beauty, for the guests, and the milk bottles emptied rapidly.

Excitement ran high when Jimmy Waites entered with his basket. Mrs Waites had prudently tied a blue-checked duster over the top, and when this was removed two pretty kittens peered out from a nest of straw.

Linda Moffat, as pretty as a kitten herself, took the business of choosing her pet very seriously, and was given much unsolicited advice from her companions.

'Don't you take that black and white 'un, Lin. See his paws? Alius be filthy, them white paws.'

'I reckons he looks the best.'

'He do seem to stand up stronger, don't he? More push, like.'

'That other's the prettiest,' and so on.

The infants, who were in my room, milling round with their elders, while this great decision was being made, became querulous, for they were dying to put both to bed in the waiting cradle.

'Buck up, Linda.'

'They's both nice, Linda. Don't matter which one!' Linda's troubled eyes met mine.

'I wish I could have them both. The other's got to be drowned.'

There was a shocked silence. I looked at Jimmy Waites.

'That's right, miss,' he said, his underlip quivering.

'My dad drowns them,' volunteered Joseph Coggs, with some pride. 'He does all the kittens down our end of the village.' He was stroking a fluffy head with a black stubby finger. He looked up into my face. What he saw there must have called forth his sympathy.

'He uses
warm
water,' he assured me earnestly.