(16/20)Summer at Fairacre (21 page)

But he smiled as he said it.

Within a day or two of Amy's party a van and a car duly arrived outside Tyler's Row.

Four men, and a great quantity of paraphernalia were unloaded, including miles and miles of cable, and a number of interesting lights on stands.

The inhabitants of Fairacre tended to pause by the gateway of the Hales' place, as they went ostensibly about their business of shopping, posting letters, or simply taking their daily constitutionals.

Speculation ran rife about the true nature of their activities.

'Mr Hale ain't having 'em anywhere indoors,' said Mr Willet. 'And I don't blame him. They look a proper lot of down and outs. Not a tie between 'em!'

'They do say they might need extras. Wouldn't it be lovely to be on the telly?' said his wife.

'Mr Hale wouldn't let them cut off a branch of his apple tree what was in the way of the cameras. He can be awkward, you know. Him being a schoolmaster, I suppose. Does seem to spoil your nature,' went on Mr Willet.

'Thanks,' I said.

Mr Willet appeared unmoved by my sarcasm.

'That chap Baker what takes an interest in Loyshus, he's about.'

'I know,' I said.

'Is he hanging his hat up to Miss Quinn, would you know?'

'Not that I know of,' I said frostily, inwardly marvelling, yet again, at the village's uncanny interest in other people's private lives.

'Well, I only asks because he's been at Holly Lodge once or twice. Lost his wife in an air crash, I'm told.'

'He and Miss Quinn knew each other years ago,' I admitted. 'He was at college with her brother.'

I always work on the principle that it is as well to let others know a limited amount. It keeps their minds occupied with the little that one is prepared to be known publicly. With any luck—a forlorn hope usually—the nub of the matter will remain hidden.

I pondered on this little snippet of information as I sat in the garden that evening. Mr Lamb, of the Post Office, had brought me a basket large enough to have been a baker's, and filled to the brim with gooseberries.

I set about topping and tailing them with my best nail scissors. They seemed to be the only sharp pair in the house.

It was very pleasant sitting there, with Tibby rolling about at my feet. A starling had taken up a most peculiar position at the far end of the lawn, either sunning itself, with wings outstretched, or engaged in that odd activity called 'anting'. I was too ignorant to know exactly.

There was a distant crackling from the vicar's bonfire next door, where he was busy burning hedge cuttings. Occasionally, a wisp of blue smoke drifted across my garden towards Mr Roberts' corn. I knew the vicar himself would be in charge of this operation. He has a horror of setting fire to things, and with everything tinder-dry it would have been easy to set alight not only the corn, but the brittle hedges and trees, and even a neighbour's thatch. We have seen these tragedies in Fairacre when other people, not as careful as Mr Partridge and Mr Roberts, have burnt their stubble when the wind has been high.

How on earth, I wondered, was I going to store all these gooseberries? I supposed that I could make some jam and jelly. Gooseberry jelly is delicious with cold meats of every sort. But there is a limit to the amount of such preserves that a lone spinster can get through.

I decided to bottle some and to freeze some, but there would still be a vast quantity left. Mrs Coggs sprang to mind. She should be presented with jam and some of the bottles. Homemade gooseberry jam should go down well with all those hungry mouths to feed, and if the fruit were bottled in a good syrup then Mrs Coggs' desserts would need the minimum of cooking attention. The only difficulty would be smuggling it to Mrs Coggs without Mr Lamb knowing.

Thus settled, I turned my mind again to Mr Willet's speculation. Would Miriam ever consider giving up her happy solitude at Holly Lodge? Certainly, she seemed very animated in Gerard's company, and Amy herself had remarked on her vivacity and Gerard's attentiveness. Mind you, I reminded myself, Amy was no fair judge of the situation, biased as she was towards my own single state which she was constantly hoping to rectify. The behaviour of poor Horace Umbleditch, who had rushed into an engagement with the school secretary, had much offended Amy, who had ear-marked him for me.

As I had pointed out gently, Horace was now approaching forty, and presumably knew what he was doing. Personally, I wished him well, and the little I had seen of Eve Masters pleased me. They should make a success of marriage.

Somehow I could not imagine Miriam taking Gerard seriously. She seemed dedicated to her career, worked harder than anyone else I knew, and relished her little abode behind the holly hedge. Irene and David Mawne were ideal landlords, ready to help if need be, but respecting Miriam's strong desire for privacy.

No, on the whole, I decided, as I snipped the last top and tail and shook the fruit level in the basket, Miriam would remain as she was. She liked her own company as dearly as I did.

I staggered into the house and put the basket on the cool bricks of the larder floor. Tomorrow would be time enough to tackle them.

There was a knock at the back door. There, on the doorstep, stood Mrs Pringle. She was carrying a basket in each hand.

They contained gooseberries.

'Come in, come in,' I invited, trying to look enthusiastic about the gifts she was bearing.

The lady smiled graciously and stepped in, putting the baskets on the kitchen table. I must be careful, I thought, not to open the larder door in her presence.

'I knows you likes a few gooseberries,' said Mrs Pringle. 'And it seems to have been a bumper crop this year.'

'It does indeed,' I agreed. 'Now come and sit down, to rest your leg, and tell me how things are going.'

Mrs Pringle seemed in a remarkably amiable mood, and I wondered if, by any chance, she had made up her mind to return.

Much as I wanted it, I refused to ask her outright. Let her make the running, I thought.

We spoke of things in general, skirting the main topic which was in our minds. That dear old standby, the weather, occupied our polite exchanges for a few minutes, while I was conscious of Mrs Pringle's beady gaze upon the furniture which was normally in her care, and which, I guessed, she hoped to see in an advanced state of dilapidation.

'And how are things at your end of the village?' I enquired.

'Well, now, I expect you know as much as I do, but let's see. Mr Mawne seems to be more settled now his wife's back. To my mind, he's a man who needs a woman to keep him company, but then what man don't?'

I took this to be a rhetorical question, and refrained from comment.

'Same as that Wayne,' went on Mrs Pringle, leaping from her end of the village to mine. 'He's proper soppy about his Miss Briggs. It's
love,
you see. Makes the world go round, as they say.'

A look of maudlin sympathy appeared on Mrs Pringle's face. I was too taken aback by this rare display of tenderness to respond.

'I take it you'll be going to the wedding?'

'Yes, I am,' I managed to reply.

'I loves a wedding myself. No matter if it's doomed from the start, I still enjoy it, though I don't hold with these pregnant girls wearing white. Minnie did, you know. I told her it was a scandal, but she would have it so.'

'How is Mrs Coggs?' I asked, anxious to steer the subject to safer ground.

'Doing nicely without Arthur. Though she's been to see him, of course.'

This was news to me.

'Yes, Mr Partridge has been up there twice, and taken her with him. She don't say much about how Arthur is, but after all, she must feel sorry for him, and she must love him to stick by him all these years.'

Privately, I thought that poor Mrs Coggs had little alternative but to stay with her unsatisfactory husband with the tribe of children she had depending on her, but such astringent comment would have passed over Mrs Pringle's head in her present romantic mood.

And how typical of our good-hearted vicar to visit one of his most notorious back-sliders in prison! He put us to shame with his practical Christianity.

'I see that nice Mr Baker is helping the telly men,' went on Mrs Pringle. Ah, I thought! Are we now approaching the heart of the matter? Will Miriam Quinn's name crop up?

It did.

'I do hear as how he used to know Miss Quinn years ago.'

'That's right,' I agreed.

'Well, they seem to enjoy each other's company. My cousin in Caxley saw them in The Green Man one evening.'

'Really?' I said coldly.

'My cousin is barmaid there, and having a terrible time trying to slim. She's a convulsive eater, the doctor says, and with all them peanuts and crisps laying about it's a rare temptation.'

Was Mrs Pringle skating away from thin ice, I wondered? She was getting no more information from me, I vowed secretly.

'Well, there it is,' said the lady, rising majestically, it's the same for high and low, isn't it? Mrs Coggs, Mr Mawne, Miss Briggs and Miss Quinn, all Touched by Love, as you might say.'

I followed her into the kitchen. There was no trace of a limp, I noticed.

'Let me empty your baskets,' I said, lifting out the bowl from the sink to take her largesse.

I accompanied her across the playground to the school gate. She glanced across at the school porch.

'I take it Bella is still doing her best?'

'Yes indeed. She's doing a splendid job.'

A slightly malevolent expression crept over my old adversary's face. It gave me a feeling of relief. This was the Mrs Pringle I knew!

I walked a few yards down the lane with her. The sun still shone, and there was dust at the side of the road. Pink and white striped bindweed crept along the dusty verge, as pretty as marshmallows.

'Well, thank you again,' I said warmly, i shall enjoy those lovely gooseberries.'

Should I ask her outright if she proposed to return? It was on the tip of my tongue to do so, but something held me back. Pride perhaps? Or the remembrance of that wise old adage: 'Least said, soonest mended'?

We said goodbye, and each went on her way.

While I was marking the register the next morning, there came a knock at the door, and a young man put his head round.

'I wondered if we could take a shot or two of the outside of your building?'

He had a winning manner and seemed clean enough, although Mr Willet was quite right about his lack of a tie.

Memories of the tale of the person whose carpets had suffered from five hours of programme-making assailed me.

'When do you want to come?'

'Say three o'clock?'

'That would be convenient.'

He came farther into the room. The children stood up politely, and I nodded to them.

'Good morning, sir,' they chorused.

'Oh, ah! Good morning to you too.'

He seemed somewhat startled by this everyday civility. Perhaps he was not used to being called 'Sir'. Probably just Nigel or Basil, I imagined.

'This might make rather an interesting sequence,' he said, gazing round appreciatively. 'I believe Aloysius sat at one of these desks.'

'Hardly,' I said. 'They were new in the fifties.'

'I suppose we could make a mock-up of an earlier desk,' he went on dreamily.

'I'm afraid it would be most inconvenient for you to film in here,' I said firmly. 'And anyway, I'm sure my governors would not want the children's work to be interrupted.'

'I could have a word with them,' he offered.

'I wouldn't dream of troubling you. By all means film outside, but this interior is so much altered since Aloysius's time —'

I broke off.

'By the way,' I added. 'What was Aloysius's surname? I've never heard him called anything but Loyshus in Fairacre.'

He began to laugh. He was quite a nice young man, I thought, even if he did not wear a tie.

'Stone! Loyshus Stone! How's that?'

'First-class,' I said, as he waved goodbye.

The children, of course, were wildly excited at the thought of 'being on the telly', although I did my best to explain that their presence would be unwelcome.

'Your clothes would be all wrong, for one thing,' I pointed out.

'We could dress up.'

'We've got them things —'

'"Thosethings".'

'That's right. Them things as we had for that show we done when us was a hundred.'

I gave up trying to correct this last sentence, forbade further discussion, and threatened them with no-story-this-afternoon if they continued to waste time.

The day wore on. The sun blazed away, and obviously the school would look splendid in this wonderful light when the cameras began to turn.

Three o'clock came and went. Apart from some chirruping from a few sparrows, and a ring dove rippling throatily from the school roof, all was quiet as the grave.

Nothing happened throughout the reading of
Treasure Island,
although I sensed that the children were alert for the sound of approaching vehicles.

At a quarter to four we said grace, wished each other 'Good afternoon', and I accompanied my flock to the school gate.