(7/20) Fairacre Festival (2 page)

'Bad news, sir,' Mr Willet shouted up to the frothy face which appeared at the bathroom window.

'The greenhouse?' queried the vicar, holding the window against the wind.

'No, sir. The church. Tree across it, sir.'

'Oh, my dear Willet!' cried the vicar, his face puckering in distress. 'What a terrible thing! I will be with you directly.'

The window slammed, and within five minutes the vicar and his wife joined Mr Willet at the scene of the disaster. Several workmen, on their way to their labours, had propped their bicycles against the flint churchyard wall, and stood shaking their heads at the confusion.

'We must get help from Caxley,' said Mrs Partridge decisively. 'There's no one in Fairacre with the equipment to shift that enormous thing.'

'We must indeed, my dear,' agreed the vicar distractedly. There were tears in his blue eyes as he paced from one position to another assessing the appalling damage to his beloved St Patrick's. 'I suppose a crane or some such piece of machinery will be necessary, Willet? I can't bear to think of the wreckage we shall discover when the tree is lifted. I must go inside at once and make sure that everything is safe.'

'I'll come inside with you,' said Mr Willet. 'You wants to watch out that none of them roof timbers is busted.'

They entered the church while more villagers arrived to inspect the night's work. Here was drama in plenty! The schoolchildren were pleasurably excited by it all, and to a certain extent so were their elders, but there was in addition a shocked solemnity in the face of this tragedy, and thin-lipped Mrs Fowler from Tyler's Row put into words the unspoken thoughts of all when she asked of the villagers at large:

'And who's going to pay for this lot, may I ask?'

It was a question which was to perplex Fairacre for many a long month.

Meanwhile, the work of clearing up the mess began. It was impossible to telephone to Caxley as the Post Office men were busy all the morning repairing the line at Beech Green, but Mr Mawne, churchwarden and member of the Parochial Church Council, set off for Caxley at the vicar's behest.

Henry Mawne is a comparative newcomer to Fairacre, a retired schoolmaster and a keen ornithologist. He and his wife take their fair share of responsibilities in village matters, and the vicar, in particular, relishes the friendship and support of this quiet man. His competent handling of church accounts is a source of great comfort to the vicar whose grasp of financial details is hopelessly vague. Mrs Partridge confided once to me that her devout and erudite husband is under the impression that ten pennies make a shilling, and that this fundamental misapprehension is at the root of his difficulties. Certainly parochial affairs have been much more businesslike under Henry Mawne's administration.

As Mr Mawne expected, the plant hire firm had most of its equipment spread about the country that morning, but a crane was promised for the afternoon and two men set off at once from Caxley to start cutting away branches and to clear the site for the rescue operation. He returned to find the vicar in conversation with his Bishop at the county town, the telephone lines in that direction having miraculously escaped damage. He had already been in touch with the Rural Dean, he told Henry Mawne, when he replaced the receiver, and the diocesan architect would be along as soon as possible to look at the damage.

'But the best news of all, my dear Henry,' cried the vicar, 'is from Jock Graham, who arrived just after you had gone, to say that he will act as our architect without any payment. Isn't that a magnificent gesture?'

'It is indeed,' agreed Mr Mawne. He did not care for this elderly Scot, recently retired, but realised how much this generous offer would mean to the parish.

'You see,' went on the vicar, 'I gather that all the expenses will have to be found by Fairacre. The diocesan people have just made it clear that there can be no money forthcoming from them. It's a parish responsibility. I suppose we must expect a bill of a hundred pounds or so?'

'I should prefer to wait until the diocesan architect has had his look,' said Mr Mawne cautiously, 'but from what I saw this morning, I should say we'd be lucky to get away with anything less than two thousand.'

'Two thousand?'
quavered the vicar. Horror and stupefaction showed in his face. 'It's impossible, Henry!'

Henry Mawne rose from his seat and patted the vicar's shoulder kindly.

'Cheer up, Gerald,' he said. 'I'm probably hopelessly wrong, but I don't want you to get a shock later on. I think you'll find the bill is going to be a great deal more than a few hundred pounds, that's all.'

'But we can't pay it,' protested the vicar helplessly. 'Fairacre can't possibly raise anything more than a hundred at the outside!'

'I'm aware of that,' said his friend.

'And even that amount,' went on the vicar despairingly, 'means a succession of whist drives, fêtes, jumble sales, coffee mornings and all those terrible, terrible affairs. You realise that, Henry?'

'Only too well, Gerald,' replied Henry Mawne, doing his best to suppress a shudder.

The vicar rose from his chair and began to pace distractedly round his desk, his hands clasped behind his back and his brow furrowed. Mr Mawne watched him sympathetically from the doorway. It seemed hard to leave his stricken friend in his present distress, but there was much to be done.

Gerald Partridge stopped suddenly and faced him.

'It is a challenge, Henry! This is something sent by Providence to test us, to strengthen our faith. We must, and shall, restore St Patrick's!'

'That's the way to take it,' agreed Mr Mawne, touched by this brave display of resolution. Closing the study door gently behind him, he returned home through the wind.

When school dinner was over, I made my way to the church to see the extent of the damage. The men were busy clearing the worst of the mess from the churchyard, and I went inside by the west door.

Several people had volunteered to tidy up. Mr and Mrs Willet were there, the two sisters, Margaret and Mary Waters, and various other women.

'Got my washing on the line and come straight up,' said one.

'Had to find my poor hens first,' said another. 'The hen house blew clean off of their backs, and they was everywhere from the fir tree to the coal-hole.'

Tales of the night's wrecking flew back and forth as they plied brooms and dustpans.

'The top half of Mr Roberts' hay stack went whirling by our roof.'

'Our Nelly lost three tea towels off the line. And the cat! He
would
go out and it's her belief he's been blown out of the parish.'

Somehow, I suspected, listening to these exchanges, the damages grew at each recital. We enjoy a bit of excitement in Fairacre, and the drama of this wild night would certainly go down, suitably embellished, in local history.

There was a great deal of plaster on the floor of the nave, and the pews were white with dust. Mr Willet was collecting the rubble in a wheelbarrow in the aisle. A dark patch gaped above, in the beautiful hammer-beam roof, but no daylight showed through. Hopes were running high that the damage was only superficial, but more would be known when the surveyor had inspected it.

The pulpit was badly scratched and one of the chandeliers had bounced from its hook, at the time of impact, and lay shattered on the floor.

'No loss!' remarked Mrs Mawne to me in an aside audible to all. 'Hideous Victoriana! Pity the rest didn't come down too!'

Afternoon school was a somewhat distracted affair. The children are always excitable in windy weather, and this fascinating disaster added to their general fidgetiness. Hoping to channel their feelings into some positive and useful work—as exhorted to do by all good educationists—I set them to write an essay on the night's storm.

'And you can illustrate it too,' I added, hoping for a prolonged period of peace in the class room.

'With crayons?'

'Yes, with crayons.'

'Won't be much good. 'Twas all dark. Shan't want no colours.'

'Then you can simply use your lead pencil,' I retorted loftily. Disgruntled muttering from the malcontent's desk I ignored pointedly.

An unusual quietness fell upon the room, broken only by laboured breathing as the pangs of composition gripped them, and the stutter of crayons depicting rain. I wandered to the window and gazed out. A drift of dead leaves rustled against the foot of the school wall, and a mat of ivy flapped loosely above it, wrenched from its anchorage by the gale.

The vicarage garden seemed bare of leaves, and through the gaps in the denuded shrubbery I could see several of the helpers making their way home. This, I told myself, certainly brings people together—nothing like a common foe to unite a community.

At that moment, young Tom in the front row, raised his hand. His parents are fiercely evangelical, and he is uncomfortably well-behaved and a trifle smug.

'How d'you spell "Wrath-of-God"?' he enquired earnestly.

'How do you intend to use the phrase?' I asked guardedly.

He turned his attention to the paper before him and read slowly.

'"Our chapel was not hit in the night, but the church was. My mum said it was—"' He paused and looked up hopefully.

I spelt out the desired phrase. My sympathy went out to those working for Christian unity, and I made a mental note to have a lesson on 'loving thy neighbour as thyself,' before the end of the week.

It looked as though Fairacre might profit from it.

Chapter 2

B
EFORE
Monday came round again, much had happened in the village.

In the first place, Fairacre had put itself to rights as best it could. Broken branches were sawn up into neat logs and stacked inside wood-sheds. Shrubs and standard roses were lashed to new stakes. Slates and tiles were hung again, thatch patched and hen-house roofs replaced and weighted with sizeable flint stones, in case of future gales.

Nelly Potter's cat returned, none the worse for a night out. Mr Roberts, the farmer, retrieved some of his scattered hay, and Mrs Pringle, discovering a child's apron blowing on the hedge, recognised it as one of little Vanessa Emery's and returned it graciously to the child's scatter-brained mother.

'Nearly tore to shreds it was by the time the wind had done with it,' said Mrs Pringle to me, before school one morning, 'but I don't suppose it'll ever see needle and thread in that house. Proper muddler that woman is! Half past nine when I called in, and she still in her dressing-gown!'

Mrs Pringle drew an outraged breath at the very thought, and picked up a cinder which was marring the glossy jet of the stove's surround.

'Still, I will say,' she conceded, as she straightened up with an ominous creaking of whalebone stays, 'that she give me a very nice smile and thanked me for my trouble.'

'Good,' I said absently, rummaging in my drawer for a paper clip.

'which,'
boomed Mrs Pringle pointedly, 'is a lot more than some people do!'

And with a pronounced limp she made her way to the lobby.

Mr Willet had cleared up the mess in the school playground, and had continued the good work, in his capacity of church sexton, in the graveyard next door. Luckily, the ancient headstones had escaped injury, for the tree which caused most of the trouble had lodged against the roof of the church, and had been lifted clear by the crane without much difficulty.

The damage to the fabric of the church was Fairacre's most serious problem. Providentially, it was less than had been feared at first. The stout ancient roof beams had stood the blow well, and only three or four would need to be replaced. But much retiling needed to be done to the spire and the nave, and the belfry wanted a stonemason's attention.

'And can you give us any idea of the expense?' asked the vicar anxiously as he, Mr Mawne and Jock Graham accompanied the diocesan architect and his young assistant on the tour of inspection.

The architect peered over his half-glasses and looked solemn.

'Mr Graham will go into figures of course, but I should say, at a rough estimate—'

'A
very
rough estimate,' chimed in the assistant, speaking as one who has often been caught out and hoped to miss the unpleasant experience this time.