(3/20) Storm in the Village (23 page)

Mrs Bradley had her say, and a very spirited one it was. No one, in her opinion, had ready stressed the important point, which was that this was
artistically
one of the most important landscapes in England. She reminded her hearers, forcefully, of ad Dan Crockford's many pictures of the spot. She adjured them to look once again at the splendours that hung—in far too dim a light, to be sure-in their own Town Hall. It would be a lasting disgrace to Caxley if this generation sold its birthright to a pack of—to the authority, for a pot of message—a mess of pottage, and denied its children their rightful inheritance. She sat down amidst some applause.

The proceedings wound on, statements, cross-examinations and answers, and nearer and nearer grew the thunder. The rain began to beat down, like straight steel rods, and the windows had to be shut. It was stifling as the last speaker rose. He was an official from the Council for the Preservation of Rural England and he was young, ardent and appallingly long-winded.

He agreed, at length, with Mrs Bradley. He reiterated, at length, the beauties of the range of downs involved, and he pointed on the map that still embellished the wall behind the Inspector's head, to the ancient green road that ran clean through the proposed site. That alone, surely, made the whole project impossible. He sat down as Mr Devon-Forbes rose to answer. The authority had as much feeling for the historic past as had the council which Mr Brown had the honour of representing. If he had troubled to look more closely at the map he would have seen that the ancient road was to remain as it had always been, with no building within a number of specified feet. If he remembered rightly, just such a situation had arisen in Berkshire, at Harwell, where the authority had taken the greatest pains to preserve a stretch of ancient roadway—the Icknield Way, he understood—for posterity although it ran through quite a large portion of the authority's property His tone implied that the recalcitrant roadway like a wayward child had had every consideration from a much-tried nursemaid.

The inspector looked at the Deputy Clerk, who rose and said that that brought the case for the County Council to a close.

The inspector thanked ad those who had attended this necessarily lengthy enquiry, promised to put his report before the Minister with ad possible speed, and began to put his papers together.

A devastating crack split the sky. There was a sizzling noise, and the lights went out. Through the murk came laughter, the clatter of those wicked chairs, and above all the voice of the inspector.

'And that,' he said loudly, 'ends our enquiry.'

There was a certain amount of confusion in the twilit had below. The vicar waited for Mr Mawne, from whom he had become parted, and saw a very young man approach Mrs Bradley. They stood together, at the head of the steps down to the pavement, and effectively held up the dow of traffic.

'I thought you were wonderful!' said the young man, flushing pink. 'I'm Dan's great-nephew. Another Dan—but Dan Johnson!'

'
No
!' squeaked Mrs Bradley, in delight. 'Not Lucy's boy?'

'Lucy Crockford was my grandmother.'

'Wonderful! Yes, I can see you have her eyes. Come home to tea, won't you? Stay to supper. Stay the night. Stay a week or two—'

'I can't do that, I'm afraid,' he laughed. 'I'm due in Oxford next week. I go up on Tuesday.'

'Which college?'

'Worcester.'

'Near Mac Fisheries?'

The young man wrinkled his brow with mental effort.

'I don't think so.'

'No matter. I often shop in Oxford. You must have lunch with me at the Eastgate. Heavens, how rude people are, pushing like that!'

'We'd better move,' agreed the young man, and they walked together down the steps, and out of the vicar's earshot.

'What a scrum!' gasped Mr Mawne, arriving. 'I got cornered by some ass who wanted minute instructions on how to feed a captive tawny owl!'

'The price of fame,' said the vicar benignly, leading the way to the car park.

Rivulets chortled along the gutters of Caxley, and the good citizens picked their way among the puddles. The downpour had stopped with the same dramatic suddenness with which it had started, and, although black clouds still hung in the sky over the distant downs, the sun shone.

Sparkling raindrops slid along the telegraph wires, and awnings were beaded with diamonds. The vicar and Mr Mawne drove up Caxley High Street, splashing sedately through the water, and heading towards the black cloud that hung, like the threat which still lowered, above the two villages.

'Look at that!' exclaimed Mr Mawne, ducking his head and peering up into the sky above the windscreen. The vicar followed his gaze.

Arched above them, a flamboyant and iridescent arc across the dark cloud, shone a rainbow. The vicar smiled at his friend.

'Let us hope it is an augury,' he said. And, stepping on the accelerator, he set the nose of his rattling car on the road to Fairacre.

PART FOUR

Calm After Storm

19. Mrs Coggs Fights a Battle

W
HEN
Joseph Coggs fled, in frantic despair, from the domestic hell of Tyler's Row, he had no plan in mind but escape from intolerable conditions. The wind howled in the trees above the road as he ran headlong, through the rain-swept darkness, towards the centre of the village.

He still burned with injustice, and was as frightened by the magnitude of his own rage as he was by the fury of the storm around him. Habit led his steps towards the school, and, still sobbing, he found himself at the school gate with the bulk of St Patrick's looming blackly against the dark sky.

All was in darkness, except for a faint ruddy glow from behind the red curtains of the school-house. But Joseph was in no mood to approach authority. Authority meant his mother, his father, scoldings, railings, and forced obedience to unbearable circumstances.

Joseph turned his back upon the light and looked, with awe, at the church. It would be dry in there, but nothing would induce him to find shelter in a building which, to his superstitious mind, might house the dead as well as the living. What should he do?

He became conscious for the first time of his own position. His clothes were so wet that he could feel the cold trickles running down his shivering body. He was dizzy with hunger and fatigue. He had left his home and there was no going back. He walked slowly and hopelessly to the school door. It was locked, as he had expected. The great, heavy ring which acted as handle to the Gothic door lay cold and wet in Joseph's hand, denying him entrance.

Joseph leant his head against the rough wood and wept anew. Tears and rain dripped together upon his soaked jersey, but as he rested there, abandoned to grief, a small, metallic sound revived his hopes. The rain was making music upon the empty milk crates beside the door-scraper. Those two milk crates, piled one on top of the other, would enable him to reach the lobby window and Joseph knew full well that that window had a broken catch.

He dragged the crates noisily along by the wall and struggled up. Sure enough, the tall narrow window tilted up under pressure and Joseph struggled through into the lobby closing the window behind him. Breathlessly, he made his way into his classroom, not daring to switch on the light lest he should be discovered.

It was warmer in here, for the tortoise stove still gave out a dying heat, but it was terrifyingly eerie. The floorboards creaked under Joseph's squelching canvas-topped shoes as he approached the stove. He held his thin hands over its black bulk and looked fearfully about him at the shadowy classroom. The moon-face of the clock gleamed from the wall. Its measured tick was the only companionable sound in the room. The charts and papers pinned to the partition glimmered like pale ghosts, and the ecclesiastical windows, gaunt and narrow, filled Joseph with the superstitious terror that St Patrick's had done. He turned again to the comfort of the homely stove, and re—memberine the little trap-door at its foot which he had seen Mrs Pringle adjust, he bent to examine it through the bars of the fire guard.

He lifted up the metal flap and was enchanted to see a red spark fall from the embers. He crouched down beside it and with growing wonder watched the grey cinders glow again as the air blew through. His spirits rose as the warmth began to grow, and he set about making himself more comfortable.

He crept back into the windy stone-floored lobby and collected two coats which had been left there. He stripped off his wet jersey, his poor shirt and his heavy wet trousers, wrung them out into the coke scuttle and spread them to dry along the fire guard. His ragged vest was almost as wet, but modesty made him continue to wear it. He fought his way into a coat much too small for him, spread the other on the floor by the stove, and lay down, well content, where he could look straight into the minute cavern of glowing cinders inside the trap-door.

He was almost happy. In the arrangements he had made for his own comfort he had forgotten the past miseries which had led to his flight. Only one thing bothered him, an all-invading hunger beside which every other trouble dwindled into insignificance. His mind bore upon this problem with increasing urgency. What was there to eat in school?

He remembered Miss Read's sweet tin, but knew that the cupboard would be locked. Earlier in the evening he would have wept at this remembrance, but he was past tears now. To survive he must eat. To survive, to eat, he must think.

He sat up, looked around him, and relief flooded over him, for there in the shadows near the door was the nature table, and he himself had helped Miss Read to arrange 'Fruits of the Autumn.' He scrambled to his feet and ran towards this richness. A shiny cooking apple, as big as his baby brother's head, was the finest prize the table yielded, but there were a few nuts and a spray of blackberries.

Gleefully he returned to his coat on the floor and sat cross-legged. In the shadowy school room, his tear-stained face gilded in the glow from the stove, Joseph Coggs thankfully munched his apple, while the storm raged furiously outside.

In ten minutes' time, with every scrap of food gone, he lay curled up, sleeping the sleep of the completely exhausted.

He woke once during the night. The rain had ceased and a pallid moon shone fitfully between the ragged clouds that raced across the sky. A mouse, disturbed by his movement, scurried across the floor to its home behind the raffia cupboard, and Joseph caught a glimpse of its vanishing tail.

The stove had gone out and the room felt much colder. The draught from the window stirred the papers on the walls, and there was a little sibilant whispering from a straw which had escaped Mrs Pringle's broom, as it moved to and fro across the floorboard in which it was caught.

Joseph lay there quite unafraid. What had happened was too big, too important, too far-away to take in. He was drained of all feeling. Nothing really mattered now except the fact that he was safe and at peace. Someone else must bother about his mother, the howling babies, the upturned lamp, the wretched chickens. He was too tired.

He rolled over again upon his hard bed, conscious only of the relief of being alone with enough room to stretch himself, in quietness and shelter.

It was there, fast asleep on the floor before the cold stove, that Mrs Pringle found him at eight o'clock the next morning.

At Tyler's Row Joseph's flight had had unexpected consequences. Before Mrs Coggs had had time to collect her scattered wits, her husband had entered. Work had stopped early on the building where Arthur Coggs was engaged because of the torrential rain. The overturned lamp was now upright and burning, but the cruldren continued to whimper, awaiting their tea, and the house still reeked of paraffin od.

'Where's the grub?' growled Arthur Coggs, slinging his wet cap and coat on to that same chair which had upset his first born. 'And shut your noise!' he bawled at the snivelling youngsters.

It was too much for Mrs Coggs. Years of abuse, hard words and hard blows, culminating in tins disastrous day, made her suddenly and loquaciously bold.

'Shut your own!' she screamed at her flabbergasted husband. He began to raise a massive fist, but she advanced upon him, with such fire sparking from her eyes, that he stepped back.

'Jo's run off and I don't blame him. Any more of your tongue and I'd go after him, and you can look after the kids yourself!'

'Now then! Now then!' began Arthur Coggs, in a menacing growl. 'Mind what you're——'

'I mean it—straight!' panted his distracted wife. 'I can't stand no more. I'm off to the police!' She meant to ask for their help in finding Joseph, but her husband's guilty conscience construed this last remark as a reflection on his own wrong-doing. Alarmed at this fresh independence displayed by his wife, he became conciliatory.

'Here, don't take on like that! What if Jo has gone off? He'll be back for his tea, you see.'

'That he won't,' responded Mrs Coggs. 'I'm off after him!' She began to push past him to the door but Arthur Coggs stopped her.