(3/20) Storm in the Village (10 page)

As Hilary Jackson approached the cottage she became conscious of the homely smell of frying onions. The door of the tarred shed now stood open and the little cat was lapping at a saucer of milk set out on the brick path near the back door. The girl stood irresolute and called softly to the cat. At that moment John Franklyn emerged, with an armful of sticks, from the shed. Hilary called out joyfully.

'Hello! Your supper smells good!'

'Want some?' replied the man, half jocularly.

Construing this as an invitation to the house, Hilary propped her bicycle against the fence, and entered the garden. John Franklyn watched her with mingled dismay and pleasure. She was an awkward great lump of a girl, he told himself, his eyes on her thick ankles and broad flat sandals, but her feelings seemed warm enough. He motioned her to enter the kitchen and followed her in.

'What have you been up to?' he asked, dumping the sticks on the top of an old copper which stood in the corner. His tone was bantering. Hilary told him breathlessly of her errand, her eyes roaming round the little room. Sizzling on a primus stove stood a gargantuan frying pan full of onions. On a white enamel plate nearby lay two freshly-cooked rashers, the biggest and thickest that the girl had ever seen. A three-pronged small fork and a pointed knife with a horn handle flanked the plate, and a bottle of sauce and a bottle of beer stood before it.

'Take a seat,' said John Franklyn, nodding towards a kitchen chair by the table. It was obviously little used for it was thick with dust. Too flustered to bother about its effect on her yellow frock the girl settled herself and watched the man turning the onions over and over with the small fork.

The room, after the brilliant sunshine outside, was murky, but as her eyes became accustomed to the gloom Hilary noticed that the dust was general. The window sill was thickly coated, and a dead geranium, whose leaves crackled under her touch, was a silent sad memorial to the dead mistress of the house. The window looked out upon a damp wall made of flints, which acted as a barrier against the shifting soil of the steep slope of the wood against which the cottage had been built so snugly. The wall was so close that even short-sighted Hilary could sec the holes in the ancient flints quite clearly. All her senses seemed acutely sharpened. She noticed, as she had never done before, that the chalky covering of each grey flint caused a milky edge round the transverse section, and that many of the jagged holes in the flints were filled with a glistening granulated substance that looked like thick honey.

Tiny ferns grew in the crevices and some small mauve flowers, unknown to the girl, cascaded down the damp surface. A little movement attracted her notice. Close beside a ribbed hart's tongue fern, which lolled from the mouth of a miniature cavern, squatted a toad. She saw his coppery eyes gleaming above the pulsing throat. Shivering, the girl turned again to the domestic scene before her. John Franklyn was now lifting the onions from the pan, and a second plate lay beside the first.

'Oh please!' begged Hilary, 'I don't really want any of your supper! I thought you were joking!'

'Plenty here,' said the man, ladling it out carefully.

'I couldn't, honestly!' protested the girl. Her eye tit on the bottle. 'But I'd love something to drink.'

'Beer do?' he asked, pausing in his operations. She nodded. He put down the frying pan and made his way out of the kitchen along a corridor to the front parlour. The girl could hear him opening and shutting doors and moving furniture. At last he returned bearing a florid china mug with a picture of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra on the side.

He set it before her and filled it, then poured the rest of the bottle into his own battered enamel mug.

Hilary felt better after the first draught. She watched the man tackle his supper heartily, and though the noise which he made in eating would have revolted her had it been anyone else, so besotted was she that his hungry gulpings perturbed her not a whit. He finished the plateful, scraped his knife carefully across the surface, then between the prongs of his fork, ate this last morsel, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and leant back in his chair. He looked at the girl from beneath his sandy eyelashes and smiled.

'Ah, that's better! A chap gets sharp set out in the air all day.'

'I expect so,' said Hilary, gazing at him fondly through her thick glasses. Half-remembered descriptions of strong earthy men from the works of D. H. Lawrence and Mary Webb floated bemusedly through her head. She sipped her beer again.

'Haven't seen much of you lately,' continued John Franklyn, raising his own drink. 'What's up?'

'Why, nothing,' said Hilary. 'I just haven't been to Caxley lately.' She set her mug very carefully on the table, unable to meet his eyes, and John Franklyn putting his hand over hers bent across the table. Even the smell of onions could not quell the uproar in Miss Jackson's romantic heart.

'You enjoyed our last evening there?' asked John Franklyn softly.

'Very much,' faltered Hilary. The room seemed darker and hotter than ever. She lifted her mug with her free hand and drank deeply.

'What about next Wednesday?' said the man. His face seemed amazingly close and very pink. 'Good film on at the same place.' He gripped Hilary's hand in a hot and rather painful grasp. Muzzy with unaccustomed beer and bliss she leaned gently towards him.

'Hi!' said a shrill voice from the doorway, 'What yer want done with this lot?'

A small boy, with a roll of wire netting lodged across his shoulder, gazed interestedly upon them. Miss Jackson recognised him, with instant dismay, as one of Miss Read's pupils although she did not know his name. She leapt to her feet and smoothed her dress nervously.

Without any trace of embarrassment John Franklyn rose slowly from his chair and came to the door.

'I'll give you a hand with it to the shed, son,' he said mildly. 'Tell your dad I'll settle up with him when I see him.'

The child stared at Hilary unblinkingly, his mouth slightly open. He lowered the wire netting and between them he and the man carried it down the garden path. Hilary, trying to overcome her discomfiture, emerged into the sunlight as they returned.

'You don't have to go yet,' muttered John Franklyn urgently. The child gazed from one to the other. The girl spoke primly and rather loudly.

'I really must. Thank you very much for giving me a drink.'

John Franklyn looked quizzically at her. The sun was getting low now and his light sandy hair was turned to a fox-like tawny red by its rays. She knew that he was amused by her clumsy acting for the benefit of the child who gaped beside her, and this upset her. Even more upsetting was the breaking of that charmed spell, now shattered beyond hope of regaining. For one dreadful moment, the girl felt tears rise behind her thick glasses, and prayed that they should not fall. John Franklyn saw all and pressed home his advantage.

'You're welcome to the drink,' he said with loud heartiness. He turned to the boy. 'Time you got back, Jim. Off you go!'

The child, still staring, edged slowly towards the gate, and Hilary, shaken with love and hurt pride, went with him. The man ambled slowly behind them and leant over the gate as he watched the girl lift her bicycle from the fence where it rested. He spoke very low and with his face averted from the laggard boy.

'Wednesday then? You'll come?' The girl could only trust herself to nod, her eyes downcast.

'Same time, same place?' he persisted. His voice gained a new urgency which was music to her. 'You'll come?'

'I'll come!' replied Hilary.

The boy, who had come over the hill from Springbourne, walked backwards up the slope from the gamekeeper's cottage with slow thoughtful steps, his eyes fixed on the fast-moving figure of one of his school teachers. A light cloud of chalk dust rose from behind her skimming wheels as she swooped down to the distant Fairacre road.

He remembered the scene in the murky cottage kitchen and his eye brightened.

'Coo-er!' he said rapturously, aloud. For in matters of the heart, despite his tender years, he was not 'as green as he was cabbage-looking,' as his mother would have said.

As for Hilary Jackson, careering headlong towards Miss Clare's cottage with her slightly dizzy head awhirl with dancing anticipation, what a pity it was that she had not taken heed of the moral to be found in the story that she had been reading to her infants that very afternoon! It was the tale of that foolish creature Jemima Puddleduck, who was so easily—so easily—beguiled by a certain foxy gentleman.

9. The Vicar Does His Duty

R
UMOURS
about the proposed housing estate continued to fly about Fairacre, Beech Green and the busy streets of Caxley. To begin with, opinions had been almost equally divided. Many of the Caxley shopkeepers, seeing a considerable source of income in the scheme, approved the idea. A number of the inhabitants of Beech Green and Fairacre agreed with Mrs Coggs that a more frequent bus service to Caxley, which must inevitably result from a greatly increased village population, would be of great advantage to them.

The opponents of the scheme included those who disliked change of any sort—and certainly the change brought about by hundreds more people in their own secluded corner of die country-those who were shocked at any desecration of Dan Crockford's landscape, and those who had the foresight to see that a great number of urban dwellers set down suddenly in a small rural community could cause more commotion than just the despoiling of a much-loved scene.

But when the rumour of the new school and possibly the closure of Fairacre's own village school began to be bruited abroad, the opponents of the scheme found their numbers swelling.

'Been up our school all my schooldays and my father afore me! Catch me sending our two little 'uns all that way—bus or no bus!' was the sort of comment one heard, delivered in a robust burr, by staunch Fairacre worthies. One such remark particularly amused me. Mrs Partridge overheard two parents discussing the project heatedly, and retailed it to me.

'Well,' said one, with decision, 'our Miss Read ain't much to look at, poor toad, but her learns 'em fair enough. And I will say this for her—she don't bring 'em up in the weals old Hope did us, do she now?' With which modest tribute I was well content.

The vicar had pondered Mr Mawne's advice about getting some official light on the matter of the school's closing. He was very much perplexed over the way he should go about it. Should he ignore the rumours and wait until an official declaration was made, as it must be, if there were any truth at all in the proposal? Should he call a meeting of the school managers to discuss things? Or should he say nothing, but approach someone in the Education Office at the County Hall, and feel the way?

After much earnest thought he had decided that he would go privately to his county town, seek an interview with the Director of Education, and let his fears either be put to rest or confirmed, before meeting his managers.

Accordingly, one overcast morning, the vicar set off in his shabby car, along the shady lanes, to his appointment. He drove alone, for not even his wife knew his business that morning, and he pondered many things as he rolled sedately along, hooting gently when he approached any bend, crossroad or, more frequently, any newly-fledged bird which sat, fearless and innocent, on the hard highroad. Apart from his conjectures about the forthcoming interview, he was also sorely perplexed about a more personal matter.

He had in his wallet a book token for one guinea, treasured from a recent birthday. Should he be extravagant and add yet another guinea to it and buy the new volume on the subject of George Herbert, the parson-poet, for whom he had such a high regard? He feared that it might be an indulgence. His stipend was very small and a guinea's expenditure was not to be undertaken lightly. His wife, he knew, would not hesitate to encourage him to buy it, selfless soul that she was; yet only that morning she had told him that saucepans would have to be replaced and that yet another sheet had been ripped from top to bottom by his own careless big toe. The vicar sighed heavily, discovered that he was now in a built-up area, dropped the speed of his car from 35 miles an hour to 25, and cautiously approached the Education office.

His appointment was at eleven o'clock and at five minutes to the hour the vicar was ushered into a waiting-room by a pretty young typist.

'If you'll wait,' she said, turning such a dazzling smile upon the vicar, that he felt quite young again, Til tell Mr Temple that you're here.'

The room was oppressively quiet when she had gone. Mr Partridge, crossing to a table which held an imposing spread of magazines and newspapers, v/as conscious of the noise that his black shoes made on the bare linoleum. He felt acutely nervous and looked, with lack-lustre eye, at the literary fare set out for his refreshment. 'The Teachers' World,' 'The Times Educational Supplement,' 'The Schoolmaster', 'The Journal of Education' he supposed were the right and proper things to find here, but his eye brightened as it fell upon the local paper.

The first thing he saw, when he opened it, was a photograph of a fellow parson who was noted for his outspoken dicta on subjects of which he had the scantiest knowledge.

'Dear, oh dear!' said the vicar aloud, folding back the paper, 'And how has poor old Potts put his foot in it this time?'

Completely engrossed, his own troubles for the moment forgotten, Mr Partridge was unconscious of the Town Hall clock which boomed eleven times and was the signal for hundreds of coffee cups to appear on desks all over the county town.

The pretty girl reappeared.

'Mr Temple can see you now,' she said. The vicar dropped the paper, and his head awhirl with poor Potts, inadequate book tokens, sheets, saucepans and the plight of his adored village school, followed her to the door of the Director's office.

Meanwhile, the vicar's wife was paying a call at Fairacre School. The Flower Show was imminent and she had come to see how the children were progressing with their dancing.