(3/20) Storm in the Village (14 page)

'It means that Miss Clare would have more work to do,' I said as kindly as I could.

'Oh, I'd help!' responded Miss Jackson vaguely. A horrid thought had entered my head. My spare room stood ready for just such an emergency, but my heart sank at the idea of having the redoubtable Miss Crabbe at such close quarters. I knew only too well that if Miss Clare were appealed to she would readily agree to have Miss Jackson's guests and undertake bed-making, extra cooking and shopping without a tremor. Steeling myself, I took the plunge.

'Would Miss Crabbe care to stay in my house?' I suggested. I could almost feel the draught from my guardian angel's quill as he eagerly scribbled down this rare good point in my record. Miss Jackson's dazzling smile would have been ample reward for a better-natured woman. Although I was pleased to cheer the girl after her recent misery, I was beginning to feel that the price might prove too much for me.

'It would be perfect,' she said. 'We won't be in your way, I promise you. I know Miss Crabbe wants to go for a long tramp across the downs on Saturday, and of course she'll have to go back on Sunday.'

'Then that's settled,' I said. 'Tell her that I am looking forward to meeting her.' And in a way, I commented to myself, that is true, for my curiosity about Miss Jackson's paragon had frequendy been whetted by my assistant's eulogies.

Further discussion was cut off by the entry of a mob of children surrounding a very large, shaggy, smelly dog which had obviously been rolling in something extremely unpleasant.

'Miss, he's lost!' exclaimed Ernest, flinging his arms round the creature, which stood wagging its tad at the sensation it was causing. Another child proffered a piece of biscuit and two infants patted its matted flanks with loving hands. The din was as appalling as the odour.

'Take that animal out!' I directed, in a carrying voice. Casting sorrowful, shocked looks over their shoulders the children and their noisome friend departed. I opened the Gothic windows to their fullest extent.

'Mean old cat!' floated up a low voice, from outside. 'She wouldn't give a home to no one, I bet!'

Oh, wouldn't she! I thought, as the memory of my noble, but rash, invitation came home to me once more.

12. Miss Crabbe Descends Upon Fairacre

M
RS PRINGLE
came, as she said, 'to straighten me out,' after school on Thursday, in readiness for Miss Crabbe's visit.

'These sheets will soon need sides to middling,' she observed dourly, as we made the spare bed together. 'Pity you didn't buy better quality while you was about it. Always pays in the end!' I let this comment on my parsimony go by me.

'And this 'ere white paint everywhere,' continued my helper morosely, 'shows every speck of dust, don't it? Now, when Mrs Hope lived here—and she was what I'd call a really CLEAN woman—it was all done out a nice chocolate brown that never showed a mark. But there, Mrs Hope had a FEELING for housework and dusted regular after breakfast and after tea, day in and day out.'

I remarked, a little shortly, that Mrs. Hope didn't teach all day, and then felt sorry that I had risen so easily to Mrs Pringle's bait.

We heaved the blankets up together.

'Fair strains me back!' groaned the old misery, laying one plump hand there.

'If this is too much for you, Mrs Pringle,' I said firmly, 'you must let me do it all alone. I don't want you laid up on my account.'

Mrs Pringle's mouth took on the downward curves I know so well.

'I can manage!' she said, with a brave, martyred sigh. 'Always was a one for giving of my best cheerful!'

We worked together in silence for a little and then Mrs Pringle, changing the subject tactfully, asked me if I had heard the news about Minnie, her niece. Minnie Pringle lives at Springbourne and is the young and inconsequent mother of three small children. She has no husband.

'She's getting married,' volunteered Mrs Pringle, with pride.

'Good heavens!' I said, startled. 'Who to?' It seemed odd to me that Minnie, having got along for all this rime without the encumbrance of wedlock, should suddenly decide to regularise her position.

'You wouldn't know him,' said Mrs Pringle complacently. 'He's a widower chap, very steady, getting on a bit, but can still enjoy a pipe and a read.' This conjured up a picture of a doddering individual on the brink of the grave, and I was at a loss to think how the lively young Minnie had been attracted to him. Further disclosures enlightened me.

'He's got five children of his own, so with Min's three, it'll make a nice little family to be going on with,' said Mrs Pringle. 'And Min's mother has been that awkward with her lately, it'll be best for all parties if our Min has a place of her own.'

'Does she seem fond of him?' I felt impelled to ask. Mrs Pringle's answer held a wealth of worldly philosophy.

'He's got a nice bit put by, and he's getting on. Min'll do right by him for the few years she has to, I don't doubt, then there's plenty of children to look after her later.'

It certainly sounded reasonable enough, I thought, if not wildly passionate. I smoothed the counterpane while Mrs Pringle puffed about the room with a duster.

'D'you want this great chest of drawers heaved out?' she asked. There was a menacing streak in her voice which I chose to ignore.

'Yes, please,' I said. Mrs Pringle leant gloomily against the piece of furniture, which glided easily away before such an onslaught.

'One thing
does
worry me,' confessed Mrs Pringle as she nicked her duster. 'I've been invited to the wedding and I dunk I must put my hand in my pocket for a new hat.'

'What about the one with the cherries?' I suggested. The hat with the cherries is an old and valued friend of Fairacre's, and I felt a pang at the thought of it being put from sight for ever.

'Just that bit past it!' announced Mrs Pringle. 'It's been a good hat, bought up in London first by Miss Parr, and given to the Primitive Jumble Sale for the Welcome Home Fund after the war. It's done me well, I must say, but I fancy a navy myself. Navy with white—say a duck's wing like, or a white lily laid acrost—always looks smart.'

I said that it sounded just the thing.

'It's to be a fairly dressy wedding,' went on Mrs Pringle. 'Min was all for a long white frock and having the children as attendants, but her mum made her see reason, so she's got a pale-blue that looks quite a treat.'

I agreed that it would be more suitable for Minnie.

'And I'm giving an eye to Min's three at the back of the church while my sister sees to his five,' continued Mrs Pringle. 'Should go off very nicely. I always enjoy a wedding.'

She stood motionless in the middle of my spare bedroom, duster in hand, and a faraway look in her eye, as she gazed across the playground. A rare and maudlin smile played across her normally grim visage.

'Ah, Love!' she sighed gustily. 'It rules the world, Miss Read, it rules the world!'

It transpired that Miss Crabbe was coming by car and would arrive at Fairacre in the early evening, so that I prepared a cold supper for Miss Jackson, our guest and myself, and went upstairs to make quite sure that fresh rainwater filled Miss Crabbe's ewer, that her bed was turned down, and everything in readiness in the spare room.

I had put a vase of my choicest roses on the bedside table, and spent some time in deciding on a variety of books. After much thought I had selected 'Country Things' by Alison Utley, 'The Diary of a Provincial Lady' by E. M. Delafield, 'Winnie the Pooh' by A. A. Milne, an anthology of modern verse, and one of Basil Bradley's novels bearing a reclining Regency beauty on its dust jacket.

'And if she can't find something there to enjoy, she must be very hard to please,' I told myself.

At seven o'clock Miss Jackson arrived looking very spruce in a new pink linen suit. She was happy and excited, the wretched John Franklyn forgotten for once.

It crossed my mind that Miss Crabbe might be able to help in discouraging this affair, but it remained to be seen what manner of woman she was before approaching her.

'She's always terribly punctual,' said Miss Jackson ardently. 'She said half past seven in her letter, so she won't be long.'

She followed me down the stairs and I noticed her searching scrutiny of the supper table. All must be perfect for the approaching goddess. She appeared satisfied with what she saw, and we walked out into the school-house garden which was still warm in the July sunshine.

Before long St Patrick's struck the half hour and Miss Jackson began to look anxious. But within ten minutes we heard a car approaching. There was a tooting which sent Miss Jackson flying from my side to the gate, and I Mowed her more slowly, wondering if my mental portrait of the unknown psychology lecturer would bear any resemblance to my newly-arrived guest.

During supper, whilst Miss Crabbe and Miss Jackson exchanged news of college friends and I cut innumerable slices of bread for my visitor's side plate which seemed constantly empty, I thought how wrong I had been about Miss Crabbe's looks.

I had imagined a massive woman about six feet in height, with flashing eyes, a resonant voice and an overpowering presence. In fact Miss Crabbe was a wispy five-foot-three with thin faded hair dragged back into a skimpy bun, and her most noticeable feature was a long thin nose with a pink flexible end which always appeared in need of attention. Her voice was slightly nasal and whining, but very soft. It was, however, never silent, I was beginning to discover. It flowed ruthlessly on, brooking no interruption, and appeared to function whether she were in the process of eating or not.

With considerable forethought for my own catering arrangements over the weekend I had cooked a piece of gammon and one of Mrs Pringle's chickens. These cut cold, with salad, or with new potatoes and peas from the garden, I had proposed to rely on for the main meals. Miss Crabbe, with one devastating sentence, knocked all my plans askew as soon as I picked up the carving knife to attack the cold bacon.

'I'm not a flesh eater,' she said in a low voice, as though discussing something of an intimate nature. I felt at once that to be a flesh eater was to be put on a par with all the less pleasant carnivores of the animal world, and I wondered which of them, the vulture, the wolf or the carrion crow, I most resembled.

'Let me cook you an egg,' I offered. 'Or I've plenty of cheese.'

Miss Crabbe smiled in a resigned fashion.

'A little of this delicious salad,' she said, 'is all that I shall need.' But I very soon found that it wasn't. Miss Crabbe's consumption of bread was alarming, and I began to fear that I should not have enough left for breakfast. Fresh fruit followed, and when Miss Crabbe had demolished a banana, some grapes, a Beauty of Bath apple and a generous helping of raspberries from the garden, she and Miss Jackson agreed to my suggestion that coffee in the sitting-room would be pleasant. They both rose from the table, still talking, and with never a backward look at the mound of dirty crockery, left me to it.

I set the coffee on the stove and cleared the table as it heated.

'This is going to be lively, Tibby,' I said to the cat. We exchanged morose glances.

Miss Jackson was listening entranced to Miss Crabbe's monologue when I took in the coffee.

Its theme, I gathered, as I set about pouring out was the regrettable manifestations of cruelty among children and how best to avoid them.

'It must be something lacking in our own approach as teachers,' asserted Miss Crabbe.

Miss Jackson nodded owlishly.

'Black or white?' I asked, for the second time. Miss Crabbe continued, brushing aside this interruption.

'Fundamentally, the Good should predominate in the normal child. Certain maladjustments do occur, of course, but with the right kind of environment——'

'Black or white?' I said loudly.

'Black, please,' muttered Miss Jackson. Miss Crabbe droned on.

'Which we should be able to make for them if we, as teachers, are appropriately adjusted, they should be nonexistent. It is, to a large extent, a question of Aura. Now, I personally have an Ambience which, I am told by my professional friends, suffuses a room and creates an atmosphere conducive to a ready flow between the children and myself——'

'Black or white, Miss Crabbe?' I repeated fortissimo, handing Miss Jackson hers. Miss Crabbe looked at me coldly.

'White, please,' she said, speaking more in sorrow than in anger. Now that she had noticed my presence in the room she seemed to feel that some conversational sop should be thrown to me. Speaking with maddening condescension she continued with her face turned towards me.

'We were discussing the little outbursts of spite which one still comes across in the classroom. Petty pinchings and so on. The children, of course, are the victims of their own dominating impulses, and Hilary and I were trying to find a solution to this problem. It calls for very great delicacy in approach, I feel—an application of psychological knowledge which helps the child who has had this emotional outburst without upsetting its ego. What do you do in these cases?'

'Smack!' I said briefly, and at last passed the coffee.

The evening wore on. By a quarter past eleven Miss Crabbe had told us about her recent lecture tour in the northern counties, her argument with a colleague about comprehensive schools and their influence on future political developments, the reactions of the press to her recently-published thesis on 'Play Behaviour in the Under-Fives,' and her suggestions for the complete reorganisation of Fairacre school. Overcome as I was with mingled amusement, irritation and fatigue, I could not help admiring the lady's amazing command of the English language. She flowed on remorselessly, her voice soft and faintly nasal. She paused neither for breath nor thought, but let her monologue stream forth like some smooth, never-ceasing, steady river which washed impassively about Miss Jackson and me as we sat helpless in our seats.

'Loungin' around and sufferin'!' I thought, echoing Uncle Remus. Finally, I rose to collect the coffee things, and suggested to Miss Jackson that she should set out on her cycle ride to Miss Clare's. She went with the greatest reluctance, after making complicated plans about the morrow's arrangements, and I conducted Miss Crabbe to her bedroom.