(3/20) Storm in the Village (12 page)

'You're probably too gentle,' I told her. 'You must be bloody, bold and resolute when dealing with eggs. Master them, or they'll master you.' Luckily, my demonstration of egg-management was thrice successful and we sat down to a cheerful lunch party.

Our conversation turned, naturally enough, to the Flower Show. Miss Jackson was anxious that the infants' dancing display should go without mishap. Miss Clare, as so often before, was going to play the accompaniment to the rose song-and-dance, which I so heartily detested, on the vicarage piano. My two guests discussed the intricacies of timing and the best position for Miss Jackson to take up on the lawn so that both the children and their accompanist could see her.

'Who's turning the music for you?' I asked. 'Shall I ask Ernest to help you? He's a sensible boy.'

'Betty Franklyn is doing it,' answered Miss Clare. On hearing the name Miss Jackson dropped her fork with a clatter. It rebounded from the edge of her plate and fell to the floor. Muttering apologies, Miss Jackson dived headlong after it. Her face remained hidden from view as she grovelled. Miss Clare continued calmly.

'I met the child with her aunt in Caxley last market day. They said they were coming out to the Flower Show and I asked her then. She seemed a bit disappointed because she wouldn't be dancing with her old friends, of course, and I thought that turning the pages might be some comfort.'

By this time Hilary Jackson had emerged from under the table, with a very red face. Miss Clare, observing her discomfiture with one swift glance, turned the subject to the matter of the new housing estate.

'Of course those two men must have been surveyors, I suppose,' she said, 'and what a long time ago it seems since I saw them walking up and down poor old Miller's field! I hear that it's going to be a really big affair.'

'With a site for a school already planned,' I observed. I began to serve the raspberries which I had picked early in the morning, but I felt Miss Clare's wise gaze upon me.

'And Fairacre's plans?' she queried softly. There was the very faintest tremor in her voice, and I remembered with a sudden pang the forty odd years which Miss Clare had spent under that steep-pitched roof and of the scores of Fairacre men and women who had learnt their letters, their manners and their courage from this devoted schoolmistress.

'The vicar tells me that it won't close,' I assured her. Her sigh of relief was music to hear. 'But it may become "infants only".' I passed her the sugar and cream, and set about filling Miss Jackson's bowl.

'And your own plans?' she continued gently. For a moment I was at a loss to know what to answer, for my own plans, in face of this project, had been perturbing me more than I had cared to admit.

'I should like to stay,' I said slowly, 'but I haven't had much experience with infants. The managers may prefer to get someone who is better qualified to teach young children.'

'What utter rubbish!' declared Miss Clare roundly. 'Fairacre will never let you go! Never!'

And with these few stout words my long-sore heart was comforted.

When we had washed up Miss Jackson vanished across to the school to collect music and other odds and ends for the dancing display. Miss Clare and I sat in the garden, resting before the fray.

'Of course,' I said, turning back to Miss Clare's own problems, 'this housing estate will be bang next door to your cottage. Will it make much difference, do you think?'

'I can't believe that it will ever happen,' replied Miss Clare, 'and even if the plans go through I imagine it will be some time before building actually begins. I doubt if I should live to see it.'

These last few words were uttered in such a matter-of-fact tone that at first I could hardly take in their importance.

'But surely,' I said, shocked, 'you are stronger now! You look much better than when you were teaching. I sincerely hope that you'll flourish for at least another thirty years.' It was my turn to be comforter now, but Miss Clare brushed aside my words, with a shake of her white head that had never had a shred of self-pity in it.

'I've had a good life, and a useful one too, I hope. And I've loved every minute of it,' she continued soberly. 'But, to tell you the truth, my dear, I'm getting tired now, and I shall be happy and ready to step aside whenever the time comes. I like to think of someone else teaching the children here, someone else picking my roses and sitting under the apple tree I watched my father plant. I've had my party, said my party piece, and I shall be glad to give my thanks and go quietly home.'

St Patrick's clock chimed a quarter past two. Miss Clare patted my knee and said briskly:

'But the party's still on, you know! It's time we went across to the vicarage and took our place in the revels!'

We took the short cut through the churchyard. Across the silent tombs and cypresses came the sound of a dance tune played through die loudspeaker.

Hardly daring to look to left and right, I hurried with Miss Clare towards the gaiety and safety of the Flower Show, as though ghosts were at my heels—as, in very truth, they were.

In the vicarage garden the scene was colourful and gay. Despite the overcast sky and a threatening line of black clouds which advanced from the south-west, the women and children were in their prettiest summer frocks and the men in open-necked shirts. Mrs Finch-Edwards, who had once taught with me at Fairacre School, was one of the most beautifully dressed women there, in a lilac creation of her own making, and her daughter Althea, now at the toddling stage, was in a froth of white frills. She was to present the bouquet to the opener of the Flower Show, who was a friend of Mrs Bradley's, and a famous gardener, and Mrs Finch-Edwards was having some difficulty in preventing her daughter from squatting down on the ground the better to eat worm-casts.

'Althea, please!' implored the distracted mother, dusting down the dozen frills tossing around the child's hind parts. She had grown into a chubby attractive child, with dimpled arms, and a mop of auburn curls like her mother's. The bouquet of roses was being secreted under a nearby stall, guarded by Joseph Coggs, and Mrs Finch-Edwards hoped that Lady Sybilla would soon make a start on her speech, that the speech would be very, very brief, and that her daughter would do her credit, and neither hurl the bouquet from her en route to the dais nor stop to pick it to pieces.

'I'd rather work a fortnight at the shop!' she confessed to me. 'This is agony!' But she looked very gratified, despite her agitation, at this honour done to the family.

I enquired after the shop in Caxley, which she and Mrs Moffat had recently opened and was not surprised to hear that they had already enough orders for clothes to keep them occupied until the late autumn.

At this moment Lady Sybilla was led to the microphone and introduced. She was a large, vague, charming old lady, wearing a black cartwheel hat which gave her some trouble. One white-gloved hand rested upon its crown, and in the other she held her notes. A nasty little wind fluttered her silk draperies as she leant forward to speak into the microphone.

'It is indeed a pleasure—' she began, in a sweet light voice, when a mumble of thunder sounded overhead, there was a crackling from the microphone and we heard no more. Quite unaware that four-fifths of her audience were unable to hear a word Lady Sybilla continued with her speech, and the people of Fairacre watched this dumb show with docility. Mrs Finch-Edwards was terrified that she might not know when the speech was over, but all was well. With a charming smile and much nodding of the cartwheel hat to left and right, Lady Sybilla stepped back from her non-co-operative microphone, and Althea Finch-Edwards was propelled forward, bearing the bouquet which was nearly as big as herself. She acquitted herself well, handed over the bouquet, and turned to rush back to her mother, but remembering, in time, her curtsey, turned back, some yards away from the dais, to make a wobbly bob.

The crowd dispersed to the various stalls. The Bryant boys, dour-visaged and clad, despite the warmth, in Sunday black, made straight for the bowling-for-the-pig where they would stay for the remainder of the Flower Show. It was a foregone conclusion that either Amos, Malachi, Ezekiel or Gideon Bryant would bear away the prize.

Inside the giant marquee the judges, among them Lady Sybilla, walked moughtfully about with their notebooks in their hands, and their brows furrowed. They pinched gooseberries, smelt roses, tasted jelly and cut cheeses, giving to every case that concentration of wisdom and experience which they knew was expected at Fairacre Flower Show. Many an anxious eye was cast upon them when at last they emerged, having left the tickets ist, 2nd and 3rd, which would cause such joy or despondency to the exhibitors.

The rumbling of thunder became more ominous as the black cloud arched over Fairacre. It was decided to put forward the dancing display which was to be held on the lawn, in case the rain came, and the vicar announced through the badly-crackling microphone, that Miss Cathy Waites would open the proceedings, followed by Miss Jackson's children.

There was desultory clapping as Cathy came skipping from behind the vicar's laurel bushes, and one lone wolf-whistle from a rude Beech Green boy.

Cathy, her dark hair blowing in the breeze, was clad in the flimsiest of garments as Mrs Partridge had feared. Lucidly, she appeared to be wearing her High School knickers of a commendable staunchness and a brief but adequate brassiere, but over these basic necessities floated a yard or two of green chiffon of the most diaphanous nature.

In her hands Cathy held a long strip of the same material which she tossed from side to side as she bent and capered gracefully between the cedar tree and the produce stall. Occasionally, she fell on to one knee, cupping her ear as if listening to the horns of Elfland. In actual fact, the voice of one of the Bryant brothers who had just missed two skittles whilst bowling for the pig, was deplorably audible, whilst Miss Waites remained, wide-eyed and expectant, in her listening attitude, and the words used must have given a more innocent nymph considerable revulsion.

'That girl would do better with more clothes to her back,' observed Mr Willet to his neighbour, in a carrying whisper.

'Flaunting herself in next to nothing,' boomed Mrs Pringle from the door of the tea-tent. 'Catch me looking like that at her age!' She wobbled her three chins aggressively, but remained to goggle as the scarf dance wound its airy way to its end.

I hurried round the edge of the crowd to the shrubbery where Miss Jackson and the children awaited their entry. Roses of every hue, the children were in a fine twitter of excitement.

'Why can't us wear our shoes? I've been and stood on a prickle!'

'Can I be excused? I can't wait.'

'I can't remember the words.'

'I feel sick.'

'My knicker elastic's busted.'

With such ominous phrases well known to teachers in all school crises, the children greeted me. Miss Jackson, flushed and heated, was doing her best to calm her flock.

'Would you remind Miss Clare that we'll have the first part twice?' she implored me, and I made my way to the drawing-room where Miss Clare was visible sitting at the piano by the open french windows.

As I threaded through the edge of the crowd I noticed a man, with a woman and a little girl, also approaching the french windows. Betty Franklyn was arriving at her page-turning appointment with her father and the aunt from Caxley. We greeted each other and I made enquiries about Betty's new school in Caxley. The aunt was a pleasant, fresh-faced person, who chattered away about her little niece, but John Franklyn stood slightly apart, eyeing the crowd and looking self-conscious.

'You run along to Miss Clare now,' said the aunt, pointing to the piano, and as the child stepped over the threshold the woman turned to me as though she were about to speak, but stopped short.

From among the crowd a large young woman, in a bright yellow beach frock which matched her brassy hair, stepped purposefully towards John Franklyn who watched her approach with obvious amusement.

'Fancy seeing you, Johnny,' said the plump beauty, looking at him sidelong from under well-plastered lashes. She edged a little nearer.

'And what are you doing anyway at Fairacre?' he responded jocularly.

'I've got an auntie lives this way. At Tylers Row. Mrs Fowler, she is.'

I remembered suddenly that Mrs Fowler had a niece who was barmaid at 'The Bell' in Caxley. This must be the girl. The two began to stroll slowly away towards the shubbery where the Fairacre children still waited for Cathy to finish fluttering her draperies on the lawn.

Betty was listening to Miss Clare's directions by the piano, and the aunt turned to me in some agitation.

John was a good husband to my sister—but there, he's like all of 'em, needs company. Sometimes, I think——' But here her voice faltered to a stop.

Her eyes were fixed on a little scene near the shrubbery, and my gaze followed hers.

Hilary Jackson had come running out, presumably to give Miss Clare another last-minute direction, and had encountered John Franklyn and his brazen companion face to face. She grew as red as a poppy, and stopped short, her mouth open.

John Franklyn, with all the assurance in the world, inclined his head politely as he passed by her.

'Got a nice crowd here today,' he commented, without pausing in his leisurely progress.

Speechless, Hilary Jackson rushed past them, and past Betty's aunt and me, stumbling towards Miss Clare. Her face was suffused and her eyes were full of tears. Once she was well inside the aunt put an appealing hand on my arm, and spoke in a low urgent whisper.

'He's a bad lot with women. If you don't tell her, Miss Read, then I shall!'

After this unnerving incident I watched the rose dance with even more detachment than usual. Miss Jackson was visibly upset, but luckily the children remembered their steps and the words perfectly, and encouraged by the applause of the onlookers, excelled themselves.

As they made their way from the lawn, bobbing breathlessly along with a fine disregard for Miss Clare's accompaniment, a wicked tongue of lightning flickered across the black sky, followed by an ear-splitting crash of thunder. Within a minute huge drops began to fall the rain drumming down upon die baked lawn and bouncing dizzily from its surface like a myriad spinning silver coins.