(3/20) Storm in the Village (7 page)

'I should think the children would go to either,' I said, shaking my head at a very naughty little boy who had decided to empty the dregs of his milk bottle into the ear of his neighbour. 'I wonder if we shall have to have any new buildings?'

'More likely to have a colossal new school on the estate,' hazarded Miss Jackson, rescuing the milk bottle.

I felt uncomfortably jolted.

'I never thought of that!' I answered slowly.

I drove over to the Annett's house that evening for my weekly baby-sitting session.

Young Malcolm was having his j umping practice at the end of the cot, singing a tuneless and breathless accompaniment to this exercise. To his mother and to me, peeping through the crack of the bedroom door at this bundle of energy, it looked as though he would be at it for at least another hour.

The usual thousand-and-one last minute injunctions were given me by the departing mother, while her husband brought in coal and logs, for the evening was turning chilly, gave me the
Telegraph, The Times Educational Supplement, The Farmers Weekly
and
Eagle—
the last, I suspected, confiscated from one of his pupils. I decided to read that first, whilst giving an ear to Isobel's directions.

'Let him jump until he falls asleep, and if you can get him into the right end of the bed, all the better. If not, tuck him up where he's asleep. If he stirs, you'll find the old shawl he takes to bed with him, somewhere among the covers, unless he's thrown it over the side. If he's wrinkled up his mackintosh sheet and you can possibly straighten it without waking him, it would be a help.

'I've left some boiled water in a blue jug on his bunny tray in the kitchen—not the white jug—that's got orange juice in it. And if he rcally seems hungry he can have some warm milk, preferably in his mug, but if he's really being frantically naughty put it into his bottle and he may drop asleep as he takes it that way. I'm trying to break him of the bottle, but he has it occasionally at bed time.'

I said I would remember all this, reaching for Dan Dare. Mr Annett called anxiously from the hall.

'It's past seven, Isobel!'

'Coming!' said she, throwing a scarf round her neck and grabbing her violin. 'Oh! And one last thing, take the bottle away as soon as he's asleep!'

I said that I would. Dan Dare appeared to be in a most awkward predicament, having been hoisted on a crane of some sort, by green-faced men with claws and legs like birds. I was dying to read about his adventures.

'You are a dear,' said Isobel, giving me a hasty kiss, and knocking Dan Dare to the floor unnoticed. She rushed from the room and I heard the front door slam. I bent down to retrieve
Eagle
and heard the front door open again. Isobel's head appeared round the door. She looked extremely agitated.

'Of course, if he's
emptied
the bottle
before
he's asleep, take it away in any case, or he'll get the most
frightful
wind!'

She vanished before I could reply. The door slammed again, the car gave a distant and impatient hoot, and finally drove off towards Caxley.

I listened to my charge. He was still jumping rhythmically in the distance.

Sighing luxuriously, I leant back in my chair and put my feet up on a footstool. In ten minutes' time, I reckoned, I should insert my young god-child into the right end of his bed, put his comforting old shawl into his sleeping hand, and forget him.

Meanwhile, I turned my attention to Dan Dare, who, I was sorry to see, was in an even worse plight in the last picture than in the first with the green-faced crane operators.

Peace descended on Beech Green school-house as I read
Eagle
avidly from cover to cover, to the accompaniment of the distant squeakings of cot springs. Gradually, the squeakings grew less frequent, and finally stopped.

Heaving myself from the chair, and throwing Dan Dare aside, I made my way upstairs to attend to my duties.

6. Trouble and Love

M
ISS CLARE
was busy putting the last minute touches to the supper table. It had been a lovely day, and she had been pleased when Miss Jackson had said, at tea-time, that she thought she would cycle into Caxley and call on a friend there.

'We might go to the pictures,' she had said, 'so don't wait supper for me if I'm a little late. It just depends how we feel.'

Miss Clare had been delighted to hear about the friend. She knew that she had met one or two young teachers in the town, but had feared that her lodger's unswerving devotion to Miss Crabbe, the psychology lecturer, might stand in the way of any warm friendship elsewhere. With great delicacy Miss Clare refrained from asking the sex of the Caxley friend, but hoped, for Miss Jackson's sake, that it was male, and that he was young, single and good looking. She was inclined to think, however, that the friend was much more likely to be female, and if it were that new gym mistress, she, alas! was no more prepossessing than Miss Jackson herself, thought Miss Clare sadly.

By ten o'clock Miss Clare was beginning to think of bed, for she had risen at half past six as was her custom. She looked out of the window at the clear sky, and breathed in the fragrance from her garden. The lilac was in flower, and she could see the plumy pyramids of blossom outlined against the stars.

It was nearly eleven before Miss Jackson arrived. Miss Clare heard her calling goodbye, and a man's voice replying, in the distance. Then came the sound of Miss Jackson's bicycle thrown, with a clatter, into the shed. The back door burst open, and Miss Jackson with flushed face and shining eyes, stood before her. She looked very happy.

'Oh! You shouldn't have waited up,' she said reproachfully. 'I was later than I meant to be. We went to the pictures after all.'

Miss Clare enquired about the film. Yes, she was told, it was most awfully good, but rather a short programme. They had come out at a quarter to ten.

Miss Clare looked a little surprised, and Miss Jackson rattled on.

'We were so thirsty that we went into "The Bell" for a drink,' she explained, somewhat defiantly. 'Anything wrong with that?'

Miss Clare felt vaguely uncomfortable. It was obvious that Miss Jackson was very much on the defensive, and Miss Clare was beginning to wonder why. So far no name had been given to the friend, and whether it was male or female Miss Clare did not really know—but she was beginning to suspect that the friend was a man, and one that Miss Jackson felt she would not approve of.

'I don't know that "The Bell" is a very pleasant place for two girls to enter unescorted,' answered Miss Clare mildly, 'I see from
The Caxley Chronicle
that it is frequented by a number of Irish labourers who appear regularly before the magistrate.' She had chosen her words with some guile, and her manner was pleasant. Miss Jackson bolted her last mouthful of pie, and placed her knife and fork across her plate, with exaggerated deliberation.

'As it happens,' she said, raising her thick eyebrows, 'I was accompanied by a man.' Miss Clare congratulated herself privately upon eliciting this information. 'And what's more, he saw me home, so I was well looked after.'

'I'm glad to hear it,' said Miss Clare gently, pushing the cheese dish towards her lodger. 'Would you take some of my dark purple lilac to Miss Read in the morning?' she continued, skating gracefully away from thin ice. 'She has a lovely pale one, I know, but no deep purple.'

'Of course I will,' said Miss Jackson heartily. She seemed relieved that the subject had been changed, and Miss Clare's misgivings grew. Who on earth could it be? She pondered the question as she made her way wearily up the little staircase.

Although it was late, it was some time before Miss Clare fell asleep. Her lodger had gone, singing, to bed. Miss Clare had waited for the two thumps which were the sign that Miss Jackson's shoes had been kicked off, for the click of the light switch, and the final creak as Miss Jackson clambered into the high feather bed.

Somewhere, in the velvety darkness, a nightingale throbbed out his song from a spray of blossom. He was urgent and languorous in turn, now brittle and staccato, now pouring forth a low, steady ripple of bubbling sound. Miss Clare lay in her shadowy room, listening to him, and thinking of the girl beyond the wall, so young, so very ignorant, and so pathetically sure of herself.

'She's really old enough to know what she's about,' Miss Clare told herself, 'And yet—how I wish her parents were here.'

She heard the church clock at Beech Green strike two before she fell asleep. And still the nightingale sang of love and trouble, trouble and love, as though his heart were full to overflowing.

It was Amy who first told me that Miss Jackson and the Franklyn man had been seen about together, on several occasions, in Caxley.

'They were in the cinema the other night,' said Amy, 'holding hands and with eyes only for each other. I wonder why courting couples pay good money to sit through films which must be a great interruption to them?'

'Nowhere else to go, I expect,' I said, trying to sound less concerned than I felt. 'But Amy, are you sure it was Franklyn?'

'How do I know?' said Amy reasonably enough, 'But Joy Miller was with me, and she said that she thought it was her uncle's gamekeeper from Springbourne. He was a biggish fellow with sandy hair and white eyelashes. Most unattractive I thought, but there—love is blind, they say.'

'It certainly sounds like him,' I observed. Amy and I had met one Saturday morning and were now having coffee together. We stirred our cups in silence.

'Isn't it the limit?' I said, after a bit.

'Jealous?' asked Amy slyly.

'No, I'm blowed if I am!' I responded inelegantly, and with sudden warmth. 'The older I get, the more delighted I am that I'm single. Love seems a frightful nuisance.'

'Sure you're not having a reaction from Mr Mawne's perfidious attentions?' suggested Amy. 'Is this the brave front out on by an unfulfilled female of uncertain age?'

I looked at her acidly across the rickety oak table.

'If you're going to act the goat, and talk like that ghastly Crabbe woman Miss Jackson's always thrusting down my throat,' I said coldly, 'I shall leave you at once—and what's more, you can pay the bill!'

'Pax, pax!' said Amy hastily, crossing her fingers. 'Take back all I said! See my finger wet, see my finger dry, may I slit my throat, if——'

'All right, all right!' I broke in upon her gabbling, 'But talk sense for a moment. Do you really think Miss Jackson is serious about this man?'

'Looked like it,' said Amy.

'But he must be nearly forty—and his wife's only been dead a few months,' I objected.

'Just when he'd feel the need for a little sympathy and feminine company,' replied Amy, 'And dozens of men are at their most attractive at forty. What's against him? Do you think that his intentions are
not
matrimonial?'

'I don't think he'd marry Miss Jackson for a minute,' I said. 'And a very good thing too. It would be quite unsuitable. They've absolutely nothing in common. He's already got a daughter, he has a bad name in the village, and Miss Jackson's such an utter fool that she'd never see anything until she was in a complete mess, and then she'd be too pigheaded to ask for help. I don't like this business at all. If you ask me, he's a thoroughly bad lot!'

Mrs Pringle thought so too. I had wondered how soon the rumours would begin to fly, after Amy's disclosure over the coffee-cups. I had not long to wait.

Within three days Mrs Pringle broached the subject, obliquely, and with nauseating self-righteousness.

I was alone in the classroom after school. The children had gone home, and Miss Jackson had pedalled off towards Beech Green. Mrs Pringle, trudging through to the infants' room, with two brooms under one arm and a dust pan clutched across her stomach, stopped, ostensibly to pick a toffee paper from the floor, but in fact to impart and receive any news of Miss Jackson's affairs.

'Seems to have settled down nicely, she do,' said Mrs Pringle, in such dulcet tones that I was instantly on my guard. 'I like to see a girl happy.'

I made a non-committal noise and continued to look for a form which the office had told me (with some irritability) I had been asked to return three weeks ago. It did not appear to be in the drawer allotted—on the whole—to forms.

'A good day's work when Miss Jackson moved in with Miss Clare,' went on Mrs Pringle, raising her voice slightly. 'Not that she wasn't well looked after with you, I don't doubt,' she said, with the air of one telling a white lie, 'but she do look a bit more cheerful. Plumper too!' she added, with some malice, annoyed that I still turned over my papers busily.

'I didn't starve her, you know,' I observed mildly, opening the gummed paper drawer. The thing must be somewhere!

Mrs Pringle gave a high forced laugh.

'The very idea! We all knows that—but Miss Clare seems to suit her best, and of course, being young she's soon finding friends.'

'Naturally,' I said shortly, slamming in the gummed paper drawer, and opening the one with the log books and catalogues from educational publishers. It looked like being a hopeless search.