(3/20) Storm in the Village (13 page)

Covers were hastily thrown over the stalls, and the crowd ran for shelter, either to the marquee or the tea tent. I found myself wedged by the table bearing a score of entries for 'Annuals in a Soup Plate' and remembered that spring evening when I had humbly suggested this class. First prize I noticed had gone to Mrs Willet who had massed nasturtiums in a deep plate with green dragons on it.

In the comer behind the vegetable stall I caught a glimpse of John Franklyn and his companion. They seemed quite engrossed in each other and as I was contemplating the outcome of this affair, a voice spoke behind me.

It belonged to Mr Willet, and the innocent words, delivered in his slow country voice, seemed pregnant with meaning to me.

'Been stewing up a long time this 'ere storm,' commented Mr Willet.

11. Parish Council Affairs

T
HE
Fairacre Parish Council meeting was held in the village school. Mr Roberts had seated himself on a long ancient desk which stood at the side of the room. His tall, burly frame was too big to cram itself into juvenile desks, but Mrs Bradley, small, alert and ready for battle, looked quite at home in the front desk usually occupied by Joseph Coggs.

Two members from Beech Green sat nearby, for although that village was larger than Fairacre it came in the latter's parish. Mr Annett had unashamedly rummaged in his desk, abstracted Ernest's arithmetic book and was studying his work with a censorious eye. Beside him sat the Beech Green butcher's wife, a large, florid lady, looking as succulent as her husband's joints.

Mr Lamb, from Fairacre Post Office, who was Clerk to the Council, had set out his papers on the teacher's desk and was now roaming round the classroom looking at the children's pictures which decorated the walls.

'Too much paint slopped on this one,' he remarked to anyone who cared to listen. 'Shocking waste of material! And never had these durn great lumps of paper when I was here! Half a sheet of small white, just big enough for a sprig of privet, and then shade the lot in careful!'

At this point the vicar bustled in, breathless and full of apologies, and took his seat as chairman. Mr Lamb sank on to the chair beside him, and applied himself to his papers.

'Apologies from Colonel Wesley, laid up with lumbago, I'm sorry to say,' began the vicar. At once remedies were suggested by all present.

'Nothing like old-fashioned brown paper ironed on!' asserted Mr Lamb.

'Nothing but heat and rest does any good!' vowed Mrs Bradley.

'Plenty of exercise and forget about it!' said Mr Roberts, at the same moment. He had never suffered an ache or pain in his life.

The vicar raised his voice slightly.

'And from Mrs Pratt who can't leave her poor old father, I fear. He's at his most trying as the moon waxes.'

There were murmurs of sympathy. Mr Annett, stuffing away Ernest's arithmetic book, looked sceptical.

'And now to the main business,' said the vicar, opening out a very long typewritten document, which had so many pages that even the stoutest heart among the parish councillors quailed a little as thoughts of supper grew sharper. 'I'd better read this straight through. The letter attached is from the Clerk to the Rural District Council who says that he encloses the proposed plan for an estate to house workers at the atomic establishment and he would be glad of our comments.'

'Unprintable!' said Mrs Bradley vehemently.

'Please, please,' begged the vicar, 'let us keep an open mind until we have studied this document.'

'Poor Mr Miller,' sighed the butcher's wife, 'he came into our shop last week, and he looked proper broken up!'

'We don't know, officially, that Mr Miller is involved in any way,' said the vicar patiently. No one appeared to hear him.

'Talk about Russia!' commented Mr Roberts with a snort.

'Taking first-class farmland for a pack of townees to ruin!' exclaimed Mr Annett warmly. 'And five times too many children swarming into my school!'

'And what's to happen to our own kiddies?' asked Mr Lamb, thumping the desk to emphasise his point.

The vicar thumped beside him, and the parish council looked with surprise and some disfavour at this display of officiousness on the part of its chairman.

'Ladies and gentlemen, please!' protested the vicar, his mild old face quite pink with effort. 'You are all jumping to conclusions! I must beg of you to listen to the proposals here set out, and we will discuss them—impartially, I hope—after we have heard them!'

The councillors settled themselves more comfortably in their cramped quarters, and turned attentive faces to the vicar. He began to read in his beautifully sonorous voice and bis audience listened intently. Outside, the swifts screamed past the Gothic windows and, now and again, the lowing of Samson, Mr Roberts' house cow, was heard. From the windowsill die scent of honeysuckle wafted down, from a fine bunch which had been stuffed by a child's hand into a Virol jar.

The wall clock, whose measured tick had acted as a background to the vicar's monologue, stood at ten to eight when at last he put the papers down on the desk, removed his reading glasses, and gazed speculatively at his thoughtful companions.

'Well?' he asked. Mr Roberts shifted his long legs.

'Can't say I took it all in,' he confessed.

'Nor me,' admitted Mr Lamb sadly. Mr Annett caught his chairman's eye and spoke in his brisk, light, schoolmaster's voice.

'It seems to me that it all boils down to this. Perhaps you'll correct me if I'm wrong?' He turned to the vicar questioningly and received a gentle nod.

'The atomic energy authority proposes to purchase—compulsorily, if necessary, and it looks as though it will be -a site between our two villages comprising about a hundred and fifty odd acres. This will take in Miller's Hundred Acre Field with about half the slope of the downs behind. Provision is made for a school, playing fields for the community, and a row of shops. In other words this township would be a self-contained unit.'

'There is no church,' put in the vicar. His tone held a mild rebuke.

'No. No church,' agreed Mr Annett. 'But presumably there would be room for more people in Fairacre or our own church.' The vicar nodded his agreement rather sadly.

'Plenty of room!' he admitted. 'Yes, my dear fellow, plenty of room!'

'Water and sewage is also proposed, and these services would probably be extended to include Fairacre and Beech Green. As I see it this means that although the atomic energy authority pays a considerable part our local authority will also have to pay, which means that our rates will go up again.'

'Impossible!' said Mrs Bradley. 'There's not a soul will stand for it!'

'And anyway,' pointed out Mr Roberts, 'who wants to pay for something he doesn't want?'

'Exactly,' said Mrs Bradley vehemently, turning her back on the meeting and settling herself face to face with the farmer for a really downright argument. The vicar thumped the desk again.

'Thank you, my dear Annett, for summing-up so neatly. Now, ladies and gentlemen, your opinions, please!'

'Not a brick to be laid on Dan Crockford's landscape!' snapped Mrs Bradley.

'I think poor Mr Miller should keep what's his own!' asserted the butcher's wife.

'I'm not sure that the people themselves won't be a confounded nuisance,' said Mr Annett decidedly. 'I can see them making trouble about shocking rural schools—'

'But they'll have their own!' protested Mr Roberts.

'Not for years, if I know anything about school-building,' replied Mr Annett feelingly, 'and I'll have a procession of outraged urbanite parents inspecting my school's sanitary arrangements, and telling me that my teaching methods are archaic.'

'I don't know that that water idea isn't attractive though,' said Mr Roberts meditatively. 'Getting water up to the sheep on those downs has always been a problem.'

'What's the matter with the dew-pond?' demanded Mrs Bradley. 'One of Dan Crockford's best pictures that was, "The Ancient Dew Pond".'

'My husband had it on his trade almanack one year,' began the butcher's wife conversationally. 'He said those sheep drinking were as fine a flock of Southdowns as he'd ever seen, and would've ate beautiful!'

'Nothing to touch a good saddle of mutton!' agreed Mr Lamb.

'With onion sauce,' added Mr Annett.

The vicar, seeing his meeting getting out of hand again, coughed gently.

'The business, my dear people! The planning committee asks for our observations. Can I have firm proposals, please?'

Mr Roberts suddenly stood up, partly because he was getting cramped and partly because he felt that the time had come for a decision. His great figure dominated the room.

'I propose that we have an open village meeting here in Fairacre and tell the people just what we've heard tonight, and get their reactions.'

'Stout man!' ejaculated Mr Annett, Til second that proposal.' Mr Lamb scribbled busily in his minute book.

'Agreed?' asked the vicar. Everyone raised a hand.

'The only thing to do,' said Mrs Bradley, gathering her belongings together fussily, 'There's much too much at stake for just die parish council to dispose of. Let's make it soon.'

'Next Monday?' suggested the vicar.

'No good for me,' said Mr Roberts,

'Friday?' said someone.

'Choir practice,' said Mr Annett.

At last, after various village engagements had been sorted out, the Mowing Thursday was chosen, and Mr Lamb guaranteed that he would put up notices in Fairacre, and Mr Annett offered to put up more in Beech Green and let his pupils copy a notice each to take home to the parents, as well.

St Patrick's clock chimed eight-thirty as the members of the Parish Council emerged into the playground. From a nearby lime tree came the fragrance of a thousand pale flowers, hanging creamy and moth-like beneath the leaves.

'Smells good!' said Mr Lamb, sniffing noisdy, 'but I'd sooner it was my supper!'

He spoke for all of them.

It was on the following day that Miss Jackson burst into school in a state of great excitement. I was glad to see her so happy, for ever since the day of the Flower Show she had gone about her affairs in an unnaturally subdued manner and I had felt extremely sorry for the girl. I was also much perturbed in my own mind about speaking of her infatuation for John Franklyn until I had learnt more from Miss Clare, and as that lady was looking so frail I felt diffident about worrying her unduly. As I have a horror of stirring up emotional upsets and very much dislike receiving confidences from overwrought individuals who will doubtless regret their own disclosures as soon as they have come to their senses, I had so far kept silent on this matter, but it had given me many uneasy moments and I wished to goodness that either Miss Jackson's affections could be engaged elsewhere or that John Franklyn could find employment at a distance, preferably in another hemisphere.

'I've had such a wonderful letter from Miss Crabbe,' exclaimed Miss Jackson ecstatically. 'She wants to come and spend next weekend here. Isn't it lovely?'

I said that that would be very pleasant indeed for them both, and where was she going to stay?

'Of course, Miss Clare can't manage it,' said Miss Jackson. 'I wondered if "The Beetle and Wedge" would put her up? Or "The Oak" at Beech Green?'

I suggested that she should go down to 'The Beetle' during the dinner hour and see what could be done. It was already nine o'clock, the children were milling about the classroom talking at the tops of their voices, someone had knocked over an inkwell, and from the infants' room a young finger was picking out 'The Teddy Bears' Picnic' on the piano with excruciating inaccuracy.

After we had dispatched cold pork and salad and a very sticky date pudding which the children greeted with cries of joy, Miss Jackson set off for 'The Beetle.' But within ten minutes she had returned with a glum face.

'No good,' she announced, sinking on to the front desk. 'They've got a friend coming for the fishing that weekend.'

'Try "The Oak",' I said. 'Go and ring up now, if you like, then you'll feel more settled.'

She went across the playground to my house, and at once a new child burst into the room to tell me.

'That other one,' she said accusingly, 'has busted into your place.' She was a plump red-haired infant, obviously a sensationalist, and dying for me to take instant recriminatory action. She watched my motionless figure with growing annoyance.

'Ain't you going to do
nothing?
' she demanded shrilly.

'No,' I said equably. 'I said she could go in.' The child looked suddenly deflated.

'Oh well!' she said, shrugging her shoulders, as if dismissing the whole incomprehensible affair, 'if you
said?
She vanished round the door and a minute later Miss Jackson reappeared.

'Hopeless! Don't take in people. Now what's the next move? Caxley, I suppose?'

I pointed out that she and Miss Crabbe would waste a lot of time in trying to meet. Miss Jackson grew even more melancholy.

'I suppose I could ask Miss Clare if I could use the sofa in the sitting-room and Miss Crabbe could have my bedroom,' she sighed.