(3/20) Storm in the Village (15 page)

I showed her how to work the switch of the bedside lamp and indicated the books. She studied them briefly, with a sad smile.

'Juvenilia!' she said, dismissing my darlings in one word. 'In any case, I like to spend an hour jotting down notes on my reactions to the day's affairs. I find that people take so much out of me—one gives and gives and gives! My little hour before I sleep restores my spiritual resources, then I am refreshed enough to face the next day's demands on me.'

I hoped privately that my own depleted ration of sleep would refresh me enough to remain civil to my exhausting guest during the next day. Aloud I wished her goodnight, closed the door gently upon her, and tottered thankfully to my own bed.

The weekend slowly crawled by. Lucidly, Saturday was a fine day and the two friends set off for their walk along the downs bearing packets of sandwiches-carefully non-flesh in Miss Crabbe's case—and flasks. Miss Clare had invited them to tea and so I was able to get through the usual weekend jobs undisturbed.

Miss Crabbe's unceasing conversation continued unabated for the rest of the time. She had changed her plans and decided to depart during Monday morning instead of on the Sunday evening as first arranged. After tea on the Sunday, she and Miss Jackson set off again for a walk. The sky looked threatening, but they refused to take mackintoshes with them.

'I am unduly sensitive to weather conditions,' announced Miss Crabbe, 'and it certainly won't rain.'

It gave me some satisfaction to see the heavens open an hour or so after their departure, but I sincerely hoped that they would find shelter, for the shower was heavy, and lasted a good half-hour.

They reappeared at about eight and I was careful to avoid any reference to the weather. Miss Crabbe volunteered the information that they had sheltered in a cottage in the woods and so had missed getting wet, but I did not press for further details. It was apparent, however, that something was amiss between the two. Miss Crabbe's aura was anything but benign as we sat down to supper and Miss Jackson was visibly upset. Somewhat to my relief she made her farewells considerably earlier than on the previous nights, and seemed anxious to get away.

Miss Crabbe too seemed unduly thoughtful, and though she more than held her own in our civil exchanges there was an occasional pause when the silence fed heavily about us.

As half past ten struck from St Patrick's Miss Crabbe ascended the stairs. On the landing she paused and confronted me.

'What is between this Franklyn man and Hilary?' she demanded. Her neck had flushed an ugly red, and I was quite relieved to see that the impregnable Miss Crabbe could feel emotion as sharply as her neighbours.

Before I could reply she continued. Her voice was shriller than usual, and by the glint in her eye I guessed that Miss Crabbe, behind that impassive veneer, had a very nasty temper.

'Hilary knocked there for shelter, and it didn't take me two minutes to sum up that situation! The little fool's in love with him, and he's willing too!'

Could it be jealousy that had brought an angry tear to this furious woman's eye, I wondered? I was soon to know.

'I won't stand for it, I tell you!' she almost screamed, and flounced into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

13. Fairacre Speaks Its Mind

T
HE
Thursday of the parish meeting was also the last day of term. The children were excited, chattering like starlings, and bustling between their desks and the wastepaper basket as they put all in order.

The cupboards gaped open as Ernest and Eric packed away the books for their seven weeks' rest. Linda Moffat was removing pictures from the partition between the two rooms, Patrick was cleaning out the fish tank outside, at the stone sink in the lobby, and holding a noisy conversation with Joseph Coggs who was washing inkwells in the playground. Miss Jackson's infants were equally busy and vociferous and we were only too thankful when playtime came and we could refresh ourselves with a cup of tea.

Miss Jackson had been in a black mood ever since Miss Crabbe's visit. The friends had parted civilly enough on the Monday morning, and my guest's outburst had not been mentioned again. I had received a thank-you letter in which, I was relieved to find, there was no reference to Miss Jackson. That young lady was going about her affairs with a stony face and, I suspected, an equally stony heart. She was in a pitiable plight, and I was glad to hear of her holiday plans.

'My parents have taken a house by the sea for a month,' she told me. 'I didn't know quite what I should be doing, but I've decided to go there. They always like me with them,' she added, with the breath-taking assumption of the young that their parents find them indispensable.

I remembered that a holiday with Miss Crabbe, in Brittany, had been mooted earlier in the term, but obviously this had fallen through. The month by the sea, I thought, should give poor Miss Jackson time to sort out her tangled emotions, but I felt very sorry for her parents.

The vicar called in to take the final day's prayers and to wish everyone a happy holiday.

'And the same to you, sir!' bellowed Fairacre School in a combined roar. Their faces beamed and their eyes shone so brightly that an outsider might suppose that their school hours normally consisted of back-breaking labour and physical tortures devised by their two sadistic teachers, so obvious was their relief at having a holiday.

Clutching their possessions to them they scrambled headlong to the door and out into the sunny playground. The vicar smiled benignly as their excited cries floated back to us.

'Good children!' he commented. 'All
good
children! Shall I see you at the meeting, Miss Read?'

The meeting to discuss the proposed housing site was held in the village hall, an unlovely corrugated iron building which had faded from a hideous beetroot red to a colour resembling weak cocoa.

There was an unusually large number of Fairacre people in the hall when I arrived. On most occasions a village meeting consists of a dozen or so, but this evening there were about four times that number, and seats were getting scarce.

Mr Willet seemed to be in charge of the seating arrangements and led me towards the front where Mr and Mrs Mawne were already seated. One chair stood vacant, beside Mr Mawne, at the end of a row. We greeted each other, and Mr Willet politely held my chair while I sat down.

'Between two fires!' commented Mr Willet, with misplaced gallantry, to Mr Mawne, who smiled vaguely. Mrs Mawne, however, turned a frosty glance upon Mr Willet and another, hardly less cold, upon her innocent husband and me. I remarked feebly that the evening was dark, and was not answered.

At this moment there was a stir by the door and the vicar and his wife entered. He made his way briskly to the chairman's seat, followed by Mr Lamb bearing a sheaf of papers.

'Lor!' said someone at the back of the room, in an awed voice, 'I hopes us ain't got to sit through that lot!'

The vicar rose to his feet.

'Could we have the lights on?' he asked. Several people crowded round the switches by the door, and frantic clickings began. Sometimes one of the four hanging bulbs lit up, but never the one nearest to the chairman's table.

'Do seem to be a bit awkward-like tonight, sir,' admitted one of the operators. 'Wants a new bulb, or summat o' that.'

'A power cut, I expect,' boomed Mrs Pringle gloomily. Several people started to explain to her, in a fine confusion, that this could not be the case. Mrs Pringle, arms folded across her massive bosom, remained unconvinced.

'Never mind, never mind! said the vicar benignly. 'We may be able to get through our business before it gets too dark. Mr Lamb, would you care to read the letter from the Rural District Council.'

Mr Lamb arose and read, first, the letter, and then, at a nod from the vicar, the proposals of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. His voice sawed steadily up and down, and though many an eye glanced at watches, the people of Fairacre listened in attentive silence. The vicar came round from his chair, when Mr Lamb had finished, and sat on the front of his table instead. He had ruffled his fine white hair as he had listened, and his lined, kindly face wore a look of perplexity. He appeared, at that moment, particularly vulnerable and endearing to his parishioners.

'You see why the Parish Council has invited you to hear about this proposal. We are asked if we have any observations to make, and I do earnestly beg you to consider just what these proposals will mean.

'We shall have, between our two villages, a third new one, larger by far than either Fairacre or Beech Green. The people living there will have come, in the main, from towns. They may take some time to adapt themselves to our ways. They may, in some cases, never become adapted.

'Hundred Acre Field and a considerable area beyond that will be built over.

'We are told, in the proposals, that new roads will have to be built, that provision has been made for street lighting, sewage, a school, playing fields and shops. These plans are only in rough, as it were, and may be modified.

'There is no doubt that our two villages would benefit by the electricity and sewage schemes and by more frequent bus services between here and Caxley and the atomic station. But it remains for you to say what you feel about this project.'

At the end of this very fair and unbiased account the vicar walked round the table again and resumed his seat. Mr Willet was the first to take the floor.

'Mr Chairman,' he began, 'I'm a plain man and don't pretend to have understood all the rigmarole the Parish Clerk has just read us. But this I do say. I for one don't want to see Fairacre swamped by another young town—'

'Here, here!' muttered several of his neighbours.

'And I don't see paying out good money in rates and that for a lot of street lights and waterworks what we've done without long enough. I'm a plain man, and I reckons it's best to speak out plain.'

Mr Willet, puffing out his stained moustache, reseated himself heavfly.

Beside me Mr Mawne shifted uncomfortably.

'If that fellow keeps saying that he's a plain man,' he whispered to me, 'I fear that someone will shortly get up and agree with him.' I was having some difficulty in controlling my enjoyment of this dry statement, when I caught Mrs Mawne's eye, and sobered up immediately.

Mrs Bradley, a diminutive figure in black, hoisted herself upright by prodigious clawing at her neighbour's shoulder, and added her views.

'I feel that someone should point out to the meeting that the land scheduled for building purposes is a particularly valuable local heritage.'

'Jest ol' fields, ain't it?' breathed someone in the row behind me, in a bewildered whisper.

'Our great local artist, Dan Crockford—'

'Ah now! He were a one for the girls!' commented the voice behind appreciatively.

'—immortalised that part of the country, which will be ruined,' went on Mrs Bradley.

'Two-penny halfpenny dauber!' muttered Mrs Mawne viciously to her husband.

'I should like to protest, most strongly, against the idea of houses being built on one of the most beautiful parts of our country. A part which has proved an inspiration to generations of our countrymen, and to the great Dan Crockford in particular.'

Applause greeted this robust statement and Mrs Bradley resumed her seat, flushed with success.

'And what about this school?' boomed Mrs Pringle before the clapping had died away. 'Am I to be out of a job at Fairacre School if the kids goes to the new one? Or are that lot all to come tramping over my floors making double the work?'

'There appears to be no doubt that the school here would remain open,' said the vicar hastily, 'only its status might be altered.'

'
Meaning?
' queried Mrs Pringle, in a menacing crescendo.

'It might take just the very young children,' admitted the vicar, 'and the juniors would perhaps attend the proposed new school. But, of course, nothing is definite—'

A hubbub arose in the hall.

'What? Send our Bert off in a bus?'

'And who'll take the little 'uns to school if their brothers and sisters goes elsewhere?'

'And have a headmaster, like as not, caning 'em cruel.'

'Ah! Us had enough o' that ourselves, with old Hope, way back.'

'And do Miss Read stop on? Or do she get the push? Like Miss Davis?'

''Tis proper upsetting for the children.'

The meeting, until then, had been quiet, but this murmur of change affecting the children roused it amazingly. The vicar thumped on his table.

'Please, please! I think the time has come when a few proposers and seconders are needed, so that Mr Lamb can get down his points in order. Mrs Bradley, would you care to put your motion?'

Mrs Bradley climbed precariously to her feet again.

'I propose that this meeting protests strongly against the taking of a noted local beauty spot-the subject of many of Dan Crockford's pictures-for building purposes.'

'I second it!' said Mr Mawne beside me. His wife cast up her eyes significantly.