(3/20) Storm in the Village (6 page)

It was the contents of this letter which had thrown the peppery little man into such fury. His wife, still in her coat and hat, watched him with concern from her armchair.

'Come to bed! Do now, dear. Sleep on it!' she urged.

'Sleep on it! I'll never sleep!' shouted her enraged husband. He shook the letter in her face as he passed.

'Lot of jumped-up jacks-in-office! "Might come to some fair agreement", they dare to say! Hundred Acre Field's been in our family for over a century. Do these people think I'll part with it? That they'll ever get it, while I'm alive?'

He stopped his agitated pacing and eyes blazing, he shook a fist at the ceiling.

'Let 'em try!' he roared. 'Let 'em try!'

5. Rumours Fly

N
EWS
of Mr Miller's letter from the Atomic Energy Authority spread rapidly. People shopping in Caxley High Street shook their heads over the affair, and the folk of Fairacre and Beech Green, between whose two villages the new housing estate would be, dropped their everyday discussion of births (unduly premature), marriages (not before time) and deaths (always whole-heartedly regretted), and turned to this more meaty fare.

Mr Miller had written a spirited reply to the letter, flatly refusing to part with an inch of land and adding a page or two of scurrilous remarks about the authority concerned, that made Mr Miller's cautious solicitor blench when he showed it to him. By the time it had been recast into language comprehensible only to the legal mind, and Mr Miller's plain refusal had been hedged about with clauses, parentheses and a whole hatful of 'heretofores', whereases' and 'inasmuchases', the reply ran into four pages of typing on quarto-sized paper, and was enough to make poor, frustrated Mr Miller beat his octogenarian brains out on his solicitor's desk.

'All I wanted was "No! And damn you!",' protested the fiery little man. Mr Lovejoy, who, to tell the truth, had had a most trying morning with this client, smiled placatingly.

'I can assure you,' said Mr Lovejoy, spreading his pink, smooth hands, 'that this is worded in the strongest possible manner.' He would like to have pointed out that he had just saved Mr Miller from almost certain charges of defamation of character, slander, libel and quite a dozen other obnoxious things, but he did not feel up to it. Gratitude he was not so silly as to look for from this elderly firebrand, common civility he hardly dare expect in his present state of mind, and personal assault would not have surprised him.

He was relieved when Mr Miller, glancing at the clock, said he had an appointment at eleven, and made for the door.

'We'll do our very best for you in this matter, Mr Miller,' said Mr Lovejoy as his client shot through.

Exhausted, he returned to his desk, and rang for his morning coffee.

'Black, today!' he said.

April was being as warm and lovely as March had been rough and wet. The gardens in Fairacre were at their best, full of colour and fragrance, and Mr Willet's little cottage garden was one of the loveliest.

I had spent the first part of the Easter holidays with friends by the sea, but returned to Fairacre about a week before term started to do a Utile spring-cleaning, with Mrs Pringle's grudging assistance, some gardening and odds and ends of shopping which are difficult to fit in during termtime.

Amy, my old college friend, who lives at Bent on the other side of Caxley, spent two days with me, whilst James, her husband, was away on business, and we talked so much that we were quite hoarse.

'The trouble with you,' said Amy severely, watching me look up Mr Roberts' telephone number in the book, 'is that you don't train your mind. In some ways, you've got quite a
good
mind,' she continued, more kindly, 'but you don't
apply
it.'

I said I didn't quite follow this.

'Well, fancy wasting all that time looking up a telephone number that you must want dozens of times during the year! You should remember it!'

'But I can't!' I protested.

'You could!' insisted Amy, prodding me quite painfully with her knitting needle.

'Two, one, three!' I said, having found Mr Roberts' name.

'There you are,' said Amy triumphantly, 'what a simple one to remember! Two, halve the first number, and add the two together for the third! Child's play!'

'But I've got to remember "Two" to begin with,' I argued. 'Supposing I thought of six, and halved that, and added it, and all the rest! Why, I'd probably get Caxley Swimming Bath!'

'Tchah!' said Amy, 'It's just a matter of association. For instance, I always remember my mother's number 237, because the 23 bus goes by the door, and the house is number seven.'

'Well, Mr Roberts doesn't have any buses passing his house, and the farm's called "Walnut Tree Farm," so that doesn't get us very far!'

'Of course, if you're going to be plain
naughty—
said Amy loftily.

'There's always the book,' I pointed out.

'What's your car number, d'you know?' shot Amy at me.

'Yes,' I said promptly, 'It's——.' I stopped short. 'No, I don't know. I would have known if you hadn't put it out of my head by asking.'

'And what would you do,' said Amy, with heavy sarcasm, 'if a policeman asked you?'

'I'd get out and walk round to the back of the car and tell him,' I responded.

'If you hadn't
got
the car,' shouted Amy rudely.

'Then I doubt if the occasion would arise,' I answered with maddening insouciance.

Amy was on the point of gibbering, when the idiocy of the conversation overcame us both, and we laughed so much that it was some minutes before I could ring Mr Roberts. By that time I had to look his number up all over again.

***

We walked down to Mr Willet's cottage after tea. It was a perfect evening, sunny and still. The young leaves were more golden than green in the evening sunshine, and the birds were singing their hearts out.

Mr Willet's cottage is a thatched one, and has an uneven old brick path from the gate round to the back door. The bricks have weathered to a soft rose colour, and have brilliant emerald streaks between them where the moss grows, smooth and close as velvet ribbon. The path to the front door is seldom used. The knocker is encrusted with paint and is difficult to lift, but I remembered the story told of Arthur Coggs, our village reprobate, who had wielded that knocker energetically late one night, when, afire with beer and missionary zeal he had attempted to arouse Mr Willet's religious conscience and had only succeeded in rousing his fury.

Mr Willet, with true peasant frugality, scorns to put his precious land down to grass anywhere. The whole of his patch is dug over, with the narrowest of paths threaded here and there, and only where absolutely necessary. But he likes growing flowers as well as vegetables—unlike some of his neighbours—and his small front garden this evening was thick with velvety wallflowers of every colour, from palest yellow to deep blood red. Their scent was heady, and mingled with the clean, waxy smell of the small box edging which lined the brick path.

We found him bent double over the box edging, carefully parting the stubby branches with his gnarled hands. He was collecting snails, and dropping them, with a satisfying plop, into a pad full of salt water which stood on the path beside him.

'Kills 'em in a minute,' he told us, stirring the revolting frothy mixture with a stick. 'Snails loves a bit of box! Ten minutes' steady snailing along the box, saves a mort of damage in the garden. Come round the back, Miss Read, and see mother. She's doddlin' about there somewhere.'

We followed him to the back of the house, admiring his neat rows of vegetables as we went. A narrow strip, bordering the path was devoted to flowers, and rosy doubledaisies, grape hyacinths and early pansies flourished here.

'Look,' I said, 'your apple tree's breaking already!' The tight little knots of buds were beginning to show pink streaks, and it was plain, that if this warm weather lasted, Mr Willet would have his blossom within a week.

'Much too early,' said Mr Willet, screwing up his eyes against the sun as he scrutinised this forward fellow. 'Don't like to see it! Plenty of frosts to come yet!'

He gave the grey, hoary trunk a reproving slap, and led us to the back door.

Mrs Willet was busy with her ironing, and her kitchen was filled with the comfortable smell of fresh linen.

'Take a seat, do, Miss Read,' she said, indicating two broad wooden chairs against the wall. She smiled at Amy, and I made introductions.

I'll just finish off this shirt, and then we'll have a glass of wine,' said Mrs Willet, holding the iron to one side of her and spitting delicately upon it. A tiny ball of spittle sizzled across the surface and vanished for ever floorwards.

'Just right!' commented Mrs Willet with immense satisfaction, and plunged the iron into the depths of an armhole.

We talked while she worked, and I gave Mr Willet the message I had brought about small school repairs. Naturally, the topic of the proposed housing estate soon arose.

'I heard as 'twasn't just Hundred Acre they wanted, but a goodish bit of the downs behind,' said Mr Willet, as he leaned against the door-post. "Tidn't right, you knows, to take farm land like that. They say old Miller's in a fair taking about it all!'

'Well, I don't know,' said Mrs Willet, hanging the shirt carefully over the clothes horse. 'You hears a lot about spoiling the view and that—but I knows one or two thinks it's a good idea!'

'And who might they be?' enquired Mr Willet, puffing out his moustache belligerently.

'Mrs Fowler, the Coggses——' began Mrs Willet.

'Faugh! That old Tylers' Row lot!' scoffed Mr Willet with scorn. 'I suppose they thinks there'll be some pickings for them out of it! Does Arthur Coggs reckon he'll get a jammy job there when they starts building? Plenty of overtime and skedaddle home when it starts to rain?'

'I suppose it would bring plenty of work,' said Amy.

'Not only work,' replied Mrs Willet, 'They reckons us'd get more buses through this way—probably some every day, not three times a week like we has it now.' Mr Willet snorted his disgust.

'Be everlasting traipsing to Caxley then, I s'pose, wasting time and money. I don't see no sense in it at all.'

'The Caxley shopkeepers might welcome the scheme,' I said doubtfully.

'They most certainly would!' said Amy with conviction, 'I was talking to Bob Lister at the ironmonger's and he reckons that a new housing estate would probably bring half as much trade again to that end of Caxley.'

'Not only Caxley,' pointed out Mrs Willet, 'They was saying down the baker's yesterday, that Tom Prince was thinking of getting another delivery van for the bread, if all these new people come. Bring trade to Fairacre and Beech Green, it would.'

'Miss Clare seemed to think that the young people in the village would welcome the buses to Caxley,' I observed. 'I know Miss Jackson hopes it will come. I must say it would give much more scope to the boys and girls who have just left school.'

'Well, I don't like to hear it even talked of,' said Mr Willet decidedly, 'I prays it won't come, and I'll back old Miller up, any day, in his fight. Why should the poor ol' feller give up his ground? He's farmed it well, ain't he, all his life? And his father before him? There's plenty of scruffy land, between here and the atomic, fit for houses to be built on, without picking on as fine a bit of farming land as Hundred Acre!'

He shook his head, like a spaniel emerging from a stream.

'Ah well!' he continued, more mildly, as though this energetic shaking had rid him of all tiresome worries, 'What about that drop of wine, mother? Which d'you fancy, ladies? Cowslip or dandelion?'

'You know,' said Amy, when we were back at the school-house, 'most people will agree with your Mr Willet. I can foresee a real battle about this wretched project. I know people in Caxley are furious about it, on the whole-particularly the
avant-garde
of the artistic group,' added Amy shrewdly.

'Are they all admirers of Dan Crockford?' I asked in some surprise.

'Dear me, no!' exclaimed Amy, 'but when you've gone to the expense of papering one wall different from the rest and buying a Degas to put on it, you're not going to see
any
artist's landscape defiled for the sake of a mere atomic power station. You see, they'll be firmly on Mr Willet's side.'

'It was the farming value of the land that weighed with Mr Wilier.,' I objected.

'It's the aesthetic value that will tell in the end,' forecast Amy, 'Just wait and see!'

'I hope you're right,' I said fervently.

Term started, and the children returned looking fit and brown, having been able to play outside during the fine sunny days of the holiday. I was sorry to see that three children—all from one family—had left the village and that our numbers were down to thirty-two, seventeen in my class and only fifteen in the infants' room.

'It's the smallest that the school has ever been,' I said to Miss Jackson, looking sadly at her little class. The children were drinking their bottles of milk, sucking steadily through their straws, and gazed owlishly over the top at us as we talked. 'There were over forty here when I first came.'

'People don't have so many children these days,' explained Miss Jackson kindly, as though I had been speaking of mid-Victorian times. 'They have fought for a higher standard of living, and intend to maintain it, which means that the family must be a more economic size. With the overthrow of the tyranny of church superstitions, and the setting-up of family-planning clinics——'

'All right! All right!' I broke in testily, 'there's no need to talk to me like some pink left-wing paper! And in any case, it isn't so much the size of the family, but the move to the towns that's depleting us here. This makes the third family within a year to leave Fairacre. They've all gone nearer the atomic station. Mr Roberts is still looking for a really reliable cow-man.'

'We shall get an influx when the new housing estate goes up,' observed Miss Jackson, 'or will they all go to Beech Green School?'