(3/20) Storm in the Village (9 page)

'You be off, m'dear! Us'll be all right here. Yours can have a bite of tea with our Jimmy in the garden. You take your time!'

On an equally hot day, during the following week, Miss Clare and her lodger sat at tea in the cottage garden. A sycamore tree threw a welcome patch of shade across the sunny lawn and here the two sat eating bread and butter spread with lemon curd of Miss Clare's own making. A massive fruit cake, well stuffed with plums, stood on the table before them, and would have delighted the heart of Doctor Martin had he been there to see it.

A bumble bee fumbled about the flower border nearby, and his droning added to the langour of the summer afternoon. Miss Clare, watching him, spoke slowly.

'I quite forgot to give you the jumble sale parcel this morning,' she said. 'Do you think the eldest Kelly boy is reliable enough to take it over to Springbourne?'

Miss Jackson appeared to give the matter some thought, and then replied quite excitedly.

'Would you like me to take it this evening? It is no distance on a bicycle, and I think it might be rather heavy for Tim Kelly.'

'But it's so hot, my dear,' protested Miss Clare, 'and quite a pull up through the wood. And then you don't know where Mrs Chard lives, do you? She's collecting the jumble at her house.'

Miss Jackson waved aside these little difficulties.

'You can easily tell me, and I'd really like to go out for a little while. I wanted to collect some twigs for the nature table, in any case, and the wood will be quite cool for doing that.'

Miss Clare was pleasantly surprised at her lodger's readiness to undertake this errand. The jumble sale was to take place on the following evening and she had promised Mrs Chard that her contribution would be delivered in good time.

'If you're sure—'she began diffidently.

'Quite sure!' replied Miss Jackson, putting her plate on the tray, and rising with unaccustomed animation. 'I'll just go and change into a cooler frock and then set off.'

She ran into the cottage, omitting to carry anything with her, noted Miss Clare sadly. She saw her head bobbing about in the bedroom window as she opened and shut drawers. Miss Clare stacked the tea things methodically on the tray. The magnificent cake remained uncut and Miss Clare, though still a trifle hungry, would not think of broaching it for herself alone. The shade of Doctor Martin seemed to approach and speak to her. 'Eat something else, Dolly!' it said authoritatively. Obeying her conscience, and smiling as she did so, Miss Clare meekly ate the last slice of bread and butter before gathering up her tray and returning, across the shimmering lawn, to the kitchen whose cool shadows fell like a benison around her.

She heard the girl above singing as she clattered about the ancient floorboards. Miss Clare washed the cups and saucers carefully in the silky rainwater, and dried them lovingly with a linen cloth that was thin but snowy-white.

Miss Jackson burst in upon her as she was replacing the china on the kitchen dresser. Her lodger's face was shining, her hair carefully dressed, and she wore a becoming yellow cotton frock.

'How pretty you look!' cried Miss Clare. 'Don't spoil that lovely dress picking twigs.' She indicated the parcel which stood on the kitchen chair.

'Are you sure you can manage it?' she asked earnestly.

Miss Jackson swung it up easily and made for the door.

'Don't worry, I'll enjoy it! Just tell me where Mrs Chard lives, then I'll be off.'

The two of them walked together to the shed to collect the bicycle and then to the front gate. Miss Clare gave her directions clearly and slowly. Miss Jackson appeared impatient to be off.

At last she mounted the bicycle, waved erratically, and pushed steadily along the lane towards the rough track that led from the Fairacre road over the hill to the little valley where Springbourne lay.

It was only when Miss Clare had settled herself once again in the deck chair that something occurred to her.

The lonely track which Miss Jackson must traverse ran close beside the cottage belonging to John Franklyn.

Hilary Jackson, with the sun full upon her face, zigzagged laboriously up the chalky cart track. She had to keep carefully to the middle of the pathway for the ruts made by farm carts and tractors were deep and dangerous. Ahead she could see the welcome shade of the wood. Behind her rose a light cloud of chalky dust sent up by her bicycle wheels.

The path grew steeper, and some distance before it entered the wood the girl gave up pedalling and dismounted. It was very quiet. The fields sloped down to the Fairacre road which shimmered in the distance. The warm air was murmurous with the humming of myriad wings, and beside her, as she wandered with one hot hand on the handlebars, two blue butterflies skirmished together above the tall pollen-dusty grass.

Her head throbbed with exertion but also with excitement. Very soon she knew she would be approaching the cottage where John Franklyn, the gamekeeper, lived. His daughter Betty was now safely with the aunt in Caxley and he would be alone in the little house. She looked at her watch. It said twenty minutes past five. With any luck he would be at home, and perhaps he would speak to her. She quickened her pace, steadied Miss Clare's parcel which swayed across the bicycle basket, and entered the woods.

It was like stepping into an old, old church from a sunny field. The sudden chill raised gooseflesh on the girl's scorched arms, and the sudden quiet gloom, after the singing brightness of the chalky fields, created a feeling of awe. The companionable murmuring of insects had gone and silence engulfed her. The trees stood straight and tall, menacingly aloof, and to the girl, in her highly-strung state, they appeared like watchful sentinels who passed and repassed each other in the distance as she moved nervously between them.

On each side of the path festoons of small-leaved honeysuckle draped low branches of hazel bushes, and the cloying sweetness of its perfume blended with the moist fragrance compounded of damp earth, moss and the resinous breath of many close-packed trees. The path was damp beneath her feet and muffled the sound made by her sandals and the wheels of the bicycle. To give herself courage Miss Jackson looked at her watch again. Why, it was still really afternoon! Nothing to fear in a wood at five-thirty! If the watch had said midnight, now! She had a sudden terrifying picture of inky trees, a slimy path, and a furtive, leering, sickening moon sliding behind crooked branches. Owls would be abroad, screeching and cackling, and bats, deformed and misshapen, would leave their topsy-turvy slumbers and swoop out upon their horrid businesses. She took a deep, shuddering breath, pushed such fancies resolutely behind her, and, in two minutes had reached the bend of the lane which brought her within sight of die gamekeeper's cottage.

It stood quite close to the path, tucked into the side of a steep slope which rose sharply behind it. The garden was narrow, and lay to the side of the house bordering the track through the woods. The currant bushes were heavy with fruit, and the acrid smell of blackcurrants was wafted to the girl as she dawdled past. She noticed the tidy rows of vegetables, the two apple trees, sprucely pruned, and already bearing a crop of small green apples. A rough shed, painted with tar to protect it from the dripping of the surrounding trees, stood at the far end of the garden. Hilary could see that the door was shut and the padlock fastened as she passed by it.

She looked at die cottage hopefully, but her heart sank as she noticed the closed windows and door. She could see no movement anywhere. The windows were dirty and the curtains looked grubby. Clearly the mistress of the house was here no more, and the neglected dwelling place contrasted strongly with the trim garden in which it stood.

Disappointment flooded the girl's heart, but relief too, for she half-realised that she felt fear as well as infatuation for this odd soft-spoken man who had noticed her. She was now past the house, rising steadily, until in a few moments she could stop and look down upon its tiled roof, stained with lichens and bird-droppings and streaked with murky tears shed by the trees overhead. In a dappled patch of sunlight at the side of the house she could now see a small tabby kitten rolling luxuriously in some dry earth beneath a jutting window sill. It looked up, startled, as she chirruped to it, and fled helter-skelter out of sight.

At the top of the hill Hilary Jackson paused for breath and looked down upon the hamlet of Springbourne scattered below in die valley. All, there was Mrs Chard's white house, with the pine tree at its gate, just as Miss Clare had said.

She smoothed her yellow frock, adjusted the parcel once more, and clambered up into the saddle. The wind rushed past her, cooling her flushed face and quieting her restless heart. Within five minutes she was pushing open Mrs Chard's green gate and approaching the open door.

8. The Gamekeeper's Cottage

W
HILE
Hilary Jackson sat in Mrs Chard's cool green and white drawing-room sipping a glass of lemon squash and listening to her hostess's ecstatic comments as she unpacked the parcel of jumble, the vicar of Fairacre was talking to Mr Mawne.

The two men lay back in deck chairs in the shade of a fine copper beech tree which John Parr's great-grandfather had planted. Upon Mr Mawne's chest were lodged his binoculars which he frequently clapped to his eyes the better to observe some distant bird on the far side of the garden. Upon the vicar's chest lay his folded hands, pink and damp with the heat, and above them his mild old face looked aloft worriedly.

'And Philpotts should know,' he was saying. 'He is one of the chaps on the rural district council, and a most reliable fellow.'

'Sh! Sh!' hissed his companion, adjusting his binoculars, and making his deck chair emit noises far more violent than his friend's gentle voice. The vicar was obediently quiet until the binoculars were lowered again.

'And it means,' continued the vicar in a gusty whisper, 'that the rural district council have seen the plans, and there's no doubt about it that a school will be needed on the site.' He sighed heavily, and a blackbird rattled from a hawthorn tree, scolding and squawking madly. The vicar looked penitent.

'I'm so sorry, my dear Mawne! Another bird that I've scared, I'm afraid.'

'That's nothing,' said Mr Mawne indulgently. 'Carry on. So what's worrying you?'

'Why! My school!' said the vicar sitting suddenly bolt upright and turning his wide-opened eyes upon his friend. 'Don't you see, it may mean that our children are taken by bus to this new school, and Fairacre school may close!'

'I don't believe it!' said Mr Mawne with conviction. 'Fairacre school won't be closed as long as the parents want it to stay open.'

'I hope you're right. Indeed, I hope you're right,' said Mr Partridge, in a troubled voice, 'but the numbers have dwindled to almost thirty-and I don't know—' His voice trailed away unhappily. Silence fell between the two men. Far away a cow lowed, and a tiny stealthy sound from the hawthorn tree made Mr Mawne raise his binoculars again and scrutinise it for some minutes. Finally he lowered them, pulled the strap over his head and replaced them in the leather case which lay on the grass at his feet. He spoke with decision.

'I think you're worrying yourself unnecessarily, but to put your mind at rest why don't you go and see someone at the county council offices, and see what the plans are for your school and Beech Green's?'

'It's an idea,' responded the vicar slowly.

'The local authority will have the job of providing the new school,' went on Mr Mawne, snapping the clasp on his binoculars, 'and they'll know what's happening to the existing schools if this business goes through.'

He looked at his old friend and clapped him on the shoulder. 'Cheer up!' he said, struggling from his deck chair. 'Come and have a glass of sherry. These gnats are getting me.'

He held out his hand to the vicar and hauled him to his feet.

'You've given me new heart,' confessed the vicar, as they made their way into the house. 'I'll do that.' A sudden jangling of church bells broke out in die distance.

'Bless my soul!' exclaimed the vicar. 'Half past six already! The bellringers have started practising promptly tonight.'

He sank back into an armchair and accepted the glass of sherry, which his friend carried over to him, with great care.

'You're a good fellow, Mawne,' he said. 'You've comforted me with words, and now with wine.' He raised his glass to his host before he sipped.

The sound of the bells ringing floated across the warm evening air to Hilary Jackson as she made her return journey. The slope up from the Springbourne valley was shorter but steeper than that from the Fairacre road and the girl was obliged to go on foot, wheeling her dusty bicycle. Her thoughts raced ahead of her slow feet. Would he be back yet? Should she knock at his door? She was torn between a wild strange excitement which drove her on, and nagging doubts, half-fearful, which held her back. Hilary Jackson was in love for the first time.

For a girl of twenty-odd she had very little experience of men. An only child, educated at a girls' school and going from thence straight on to a women's training college, where the redoubtable Miss Crabbe had engaged her affections and admiration, she had had little occasion to mix with the opposite sex. John Franklyn's casual attentions had lit a greater fire than he would ever guess in the foolish heart of this girl. Despite the rumours which rumbled round Fairacre, and which were causing Miss Clare and Miss Read such heart-burning, the meetings of the two had been by chance, except on the occasion of the visit to the cinema. John Franklyn had been pleasantly surprised by the ardour with which his casual invitation had been accepted. He flirted, as a matter of course, with any woman, but with young Miss Jackson he had tempered Ins usual bonhomie with a certain amount of reserve due, he felt, to the teacher of his daughter. He had not bargained for the response which he had received and, truth to tell, was half-embarrassed by it. Like all countrymen he wished to avoid trouble, and he disliked the sly teasings which he feared might get to the ears of his sister in Caxley who was giving a home to his child. It would 'look bad' to have this girl tagging after him, he told himself, but at the same time his vanity was flattered. He had loved his wife, and he missed her sorely; and though he had no intention of asking Hilary Jackson to become his second, he was in need of comfort and tempted to accept it, at the moment, from any source.