(3/20) Storm in the Village (11 page)

The infants only were taking part in this particular activity, and I had given Miss Jackson a free hand in choosing some simple song and dance to amuse the onlookers. Somewhat to my dismay, she had unearthed a quite dreadful thing, called 'The Song of the Roses,' whose inane words echoed and re-echoed through our two classrooms as the interminable practising went on. The words had been printed up on a blackboard, for the past month, in the infants' room.

'We are little rosebuds gay,
Nidding, nodding through the day.
Some are pink, and some arc white
Some are clad in scarlet bright
See us scatter petals sweet,
Like confetti, at your feet.'

After this had been chanted with various halts, cries of despair from Miss Jackson, false starts, and so on, die floorboards would begin to quake to the ensuing dance, as the roses wove their way, thunderously, between each other. A light dust would rise from between the ancient cracks, and my class would groan heavfly next door.

This morning, however, Miss Jackson was taking a rehearsal in the playground.

'I want someone to take a message to Miss Jackson,' I said. Mrs Partridge and I watched the effect of this innocent remark on the posture of all the children in my room. Shoulders were pulled back, chests thrust out, and eyes of every hue raised to mine with looks of mingled pleading and responsibility.

Patrick was chosen to ask Miss Jackson if we might all watch the rehearsal, and as he skipped joyfully doorwards the rest of the class relaxed their fierce posture and breathed again quite naturally.

While we waited for Patrick's return Mrs Partridge told me of a further complication in the dancing programme planned for the Flower Show.

'Mrs Waites has asked if Cathy can do her scarf dance again,' she said in a worried voice. 'It really is difficult.'

'What's the problem?' I asked. Cathy Waites had performed her scarf dance at more village functions than I cared to remember and I wondered what the objection could be to her repeating it yet again.

'Well, dear,' said Mrs Partridge, in a very low voice, carefully turning her back to the class to foil any astute Up readers, 'the last time Cathy did it was two years ago, and even then Gerald—and a great many other people too—felt that her costume was—well—
inadequate,
shall we say? And Mrs Waites showed me the new one, and really—!' Mrs Partridge's normally rosy face took on a deeper hue.

'Nothing, my dear, but a few wisps of chiffon,' she continued gravely, 'and poor quality chiffon at that. And yet she's so keen, and a good church-goer! It does make things difficult!'

Patrick returned as Mrs Partridge sighed, and we all trooped out into the playground where the twenty or so infants stood about in positions of acute self-consciousness. At Miss Jackson's command they shuffled into a faint resemblance of a crescent. Miss Jackson raised a plump arm, fingers daintily extended, and fixing her eyes upon her inattentive class she sang very loudly: 'Ready? We are little——'

A ragged bashful chorus took up the ditty in true country burr:

'We are li'l rawse buds gy-ee
Nidd'n, nodd'n all the dy-ee.'

Here the children shook their heads stolidly, their expressions wooden. A few fierce nudges and shovings resulted in five or six unhappy little girls stepping forward to say:

'Some are pink——' Here they stepped back, with disastrous results, among their fellows, whilst a few more were projected forward to recite:

'And some are whoite.'

A group of bigger boys then took their place, shouting cheerfully:

'Some are clad in scawlet broight.'

After this there was a short embarrassed silence, until Miss Jackson, throwing herself forward and up again in an unlovely way, reminded them of the final couplet. Wielding their arms as though they were pitching bricks into a well, and panting with their exertions, the infants gasped out their last two lines:

'See us sca'er pe'als swee'
Like confe'i a' your fee'.'

We all clapped heartily at this performance, whilst I made a mental note to speak to Miss Jackson about curing the glottal stops which our children much prefer to the sound 't'.

'Absolutely splendid!' said Mrs Partridge enthusiastically. The children preened themselves and exchanged smug smiles.

'It's only just over a week to the Flower Show,' she continued, 'and I'm sure everyone will enjoy the dancing.'

Miss Jackson smiled graciously at this kind remark, but had a gleam in her eye which dismayed me.

'It is for the
children's
benefit primarily,' she began. 'It is a wonderful release from the rigid type of exercise which they were accustomed to, and gives them freedom for true imaginative expression.' She had just drawn a deep breath, preparatory to embarking—as I knew from bitter experience—on a tedious rehash of Miss Crabbe's half-baked psychology notes, when St Patrick's clock saved us by striking twelve.

The children broke into cries of pleasure, Mrs Partridge remembered that she had cutlets to egg-and-bread-crumb, the 'Dinner Lady' approached the schoolroom door, and Miss Jackson's monologue mercifully remained unsaid.

The vicar had returned much relieved in his mind, and sitting on the verandah with a comforting pipe in his mouth, he had confessed the main purpose of his trip to his wife.

'A most pleasant fellow,' commented Mr Partridge on the Director of Education, 'an uncommonly pleasant fellow—sympathetic, intelligent-and gave me a very good cup of coffee too!' In the vicar's gentle eulogy there sounded a faint note of bewilderment as though he had expected Directors of Education to have small horns and cloven hooves and a whiff of sulphurous fumes emanating from them.

'He has heard indirectly of the housing scheme and says he feels sure that our Parish Council will know more about it before long.'

'But what about the school?' asked his wife anxiously. 'Is it likely to close ?'

The vicar leant across and patted her knee comfortingly.

'Evidently not, my dear. But if a new school were to be built on the site it's quite likely that Fairacre School would take infants only, and the juniors would go by bus to the new budding.

Mrs Partridge put down a hideous straw hat she was embroidering with fearsome raffia flowers for the fancy stall of the Flower Show, and gazed thoughtfully across the garden. 'It's a relief of course,' she said slowly, 'to know that much. But the village won't like the idea. Anything touching the children rouses the village at once. I wish we knew more about this wretched business!'

***

The villagers of Fairacre and Beech Green had not long to wait before more was known about 'the wretched business.'

Caxley Rural District Council having been notified of the proposed scheme decided that here was a matter which might well prove contentious.

'Best let the Fairacre and Beech Green Parish Council know of this,' said burly Tom Coates, the retired estate agent. 'Let's hear what the feeling is out there before we send word back to the planning committee.'

It was agreed, and within two days Mr Roberts the farmer, one of the Parish Councillors, was propping up on his kitchen mantelpiece the notice of the meeting to be held in the near future in Fairacre School.

'And that should set 'em all talking!' he observed to his wife. 'If the fur don't fly from Mrs Bradley I'll eat my hat!'

His gigantic laugh rustled the paper spills on the shelf before him. The formidable and ancient Mrs Bradley was a fellow councillor. They together represented their Parish Council on the Caxley Rural District Coundl, and if parley were to be made Mr Roberts could ask for no better ally than Mrs Bradley beside him.

'Bless mv soul!' he continued, slapping his breeches with a hand like a ham, 'that'll be a meeting worth going to!' His eye was bright at the thought, for Mr Roberts dearly loved a scrap, and it looked as though plenty of trouble were brewing somewhere.

His wife observed his relish with misgiving.

'Now don't go saying anything you'll regret,' she cautioned. 'You remember that business over collecting the pig-swill! You're too hasty by far!'

'I shall speak the truth and shame the devil!' declared Mr Roberts roundly. 'And 'tis the truth that old Miller should keep what's his own! And 'tis the truth, too, that that's some of the finest growing land in the county and should never be built on!'

'Well, speak
quietly
then,' implored his wife, as her husband's voice shook the bunches of herbs which hung from the kitchen ceding.

'I shall speak as mild as milk!' roared her husband, his hair bristling. 'I shall coo at em, like a turtle dove, but I'll coo the truth!'

He thrust his arms into his jacket, shrugged his massive shoulders into it, and made towards the door. His wife watched him go with a quizzical look. From across the yard she heard his voice raised in cheerful song. He was singing:

'Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war,' with all the zest in the world.

10. The Flower Show

T
HE
day of the Flower Show dawned with a brilliance which enchanted most of Fairacre, but which caused the weatherwise minority to shake its head.

'Don't like the look of it,' said Mr Willet, mallet in hand. He was putting the final touches to the stakes which supported the ropes of the bowling-for-the-pig site. Mr Roberts was busy budding a sturdy wall of straw bales near him.

'Keep your fingers crossed, Alf,' he answered. 'If the wind turns a bit by noon we may miss the squall.'

Mrs Partridge and a bevy of helpers were pinning bunting round the produce and sweet stalls, and Miss Jackson, Miss Clare and I were straining our thumbs by pinning notices at various vantage points to some of the hardest wood I had ever encountered.

'Come out of Sir Edmund's old stable roofs,' said Mr Willet, when I commented on our difficulties, 'and weathered to iron almost. When this lot's over, I'm having a few of these beauties to make a little old gate. I'm looking forward to working with a bit of good wood.'

And a fine job he would make of it, I knew, looking at those sinewy old hands that gripped the mallet. They were probably the most skilled and useful hands in the village, I thought, cursing my own inadequate pair which had just capsized the tin full of drawing pins into the long grass. I had seen Mr Willet's hands at work daily on wood, stone, iron, earth and tender plants. They were thick and knobbly, with stained and ribby nails edged with black, but I never ceased to marvel at their deftness and precision as they tackled the scores of different jobs, from lashing down a flailing tarpaulin in a howling gale to pricking out an inch-high seedling in fine soil.

The great marquee which dominated the vicar's garden was full of hustle and bustle, as people carried in their entries for the Flower Show, and walked round to admire—and sometimes to envy—the other exhibits.

Mrs Pringle had left the smaller tea tent, conveniently placed near the vicarage so that boiling water was available from the kitchen, and had come to look at her son John's entries. She gazed with pride upon the six great bronze balls of onions, each with its top neatly trimmed and laid to the side at exactly the same angle. His carrots, placed with military precision upon their tray, glowed with fresh-scrubbed beauty, and a plate of white currants gleamed like heaped pearls. Mrs Pringle's heart swelled with maternal pride, until her eye fell upon Mr Willet's entries winch lay beside her son's. There was little to choose between the size, quality, and colour of both displays, but Mr Willet had covered his tray with a piece of black velvet, a remnant from an old cloak of his mother's, and against this dramatic background his exhibits looked extremely handsome.

'Black velvet indeed!' exclaimed Mrs Pringle scornfully to her neighbour. 'Funeral bake-meats, I suppose. About all them poor things are fit for!'

Huffily she made her way back to the tea tent, with her limp much in evidence.

By half past twelve all the preparations were completed. Mr Willet's mallet had tapped every stake and the stalls fluttered their bunting above sweets, jam, bottled fruit, raffia hats, wool-embroidered egg-cosies and all the other paraphernalia of village money-raising. In the marquee the air was languorous and heady with the perfume from sweet peas, roses and carnations, and in the tea tent rows and rows of cups and saucers awaited the crowd which would surely come.

The sun still shone, but fitfully now as the clouds passed lazily across it. Mr Willet surveyed the weathercock on the spire of St Patrick's church with a reproachful eye.

'Git on and turn you round a bit!' he admonished the distant bird, shaking his mallet at it, and making Miss Clare laugh at his mock ferocity.

She and Miss Jackson came back to lunch at the school house with me, and within ten minutes Miss Jackson was setting the table and Miss Clare grating cheese whilst I whipped up eggs for three omelettes.

'Though I says it as shouldn't,' I shouted above the din, 'I can cook a good omelette.'

'And I can't!' confessed Miss Clare sadly. 'I think I must get the pan too hot.' She watched my preparations intently, as I buttered the frying pan and finally swirled the mixture in.