by Miss Read
There was an ancient bench lodged against the house wall. It looked as though it had once been part of the furnishings of Fairacre School in Queen Victoria's reign. We settled ourselves upon it, turning our faces up to the sun.
Some shaggy Mrs Sinkin pinks wafted their scent towards us. Two inquisitive chaffinches surveyed us within a yard of our feet, and far away some sheep bleated from the downland.
'"To sit in the shade and look upon verdure,"' I quoted.
'Except that we're not in the shade,' Amy pointed out, 'and I shall be done to a frizzle if I stay here too long. By the way, I brought a flask of tea.'
'You marvellous girl! And I've got some Rich Tea biscuits.'
'My word, you are going it,' commented Amy.
'Well, it was either Rich Tea or Garibaldi from the Post Office, so I settled for Rich Tea. After all, they'll do for cheese as well.'
'Very prudent,' said Amy.
She went to the car to fetch the flask, and I hastily shifted my weight to the centre of the bench, which bucked alarmingly when Amy left it.
'We could have it inside,' I said. 'I've got the key.'
'Better out here,' Amy replied, 'besides, I don't suppose there's anything to sit on in there.'
She was quite right - of course.
We sipped our tea. The chaffinches had flown to a nearby plum tree, but kept a sharp lookout for crumbs.
'Of course, you'll have to put in a lot of work on this garden,' said Amy, becoming her usual brisk self, 'it's been terribly neglected.'
I told her about my visit to Mr Willet.
'Sounds hopeful,' she conceded. 'And this Mrs Pringle?'
As if on cue, I heard the click of the garden gate and round the corner of the house stumped a thickset figure with a black oilcloth bag over her arm.
Mrs Pringle had arrived.
I made the necessary introductions and awaited the outcome with some interest.
We had both risen at the approach of our visitor and I invited her to share the bench.
'I wish I could offer you tea,' I apologised, 'but I'm afraid it's all gone. Have a biscuit.'
Mrs Pringle held up a hand as if she were stopping the traffic. 'I don't eat between meals. It don't do the digestion any good.'
There seemed to be no adequate reply to this dictum.
'I was just passing,' went on the lady, 'and thought I'd put this week's Caxley Chronicle through your door. No doubt you'd like to be up to date with what's happening. Fairacre news is on page six.'
'Thank you. Very kind of you. I will let you have it back.'
'No need for that. I've read all I want. I always turns to the Deaths first, and then the Wills, and if anybody local's up in Caxley court I sees what they've got. Not much usually. Probation or some such let-off, when a nice bit of flogging would be more to the point.'
I put the newspaper on the small space between Amy and me, and resolutely avoided catching my old friend's eye.
'Garden looks a real mess,' she continued lugubriously. 'I happened to see you going into Bob Willet's just now, so I suppose he'll be up to give you a hand.'
'That's right.'
'So I heard at the Post Office when I called in just now.'
The bench shuddered at Amy's ill-concealed mirth.
'Would you like to look round the garden?' I asked.
'Well, I knows it like the back of my hand, of course,' replied Mrs Pringle, 'but it'd be nice to get out of this blazing sun for a few minutes, and there should be a few gooseberries about still.'
Amy accompanied us. Despite the heat, the long grass was damp, and Amy examined her elegant sandals.
'Hot or not,' observed Mrs Pringle, 'I always wears good sensible shoes. My mother brought us up to respect our feet. "Nothing strappy or silly," she used to say, "or you'll be storing up trouble for your old age." And she was right.'
At this double insult to her footwear and her advancing years Amy could only respond with some heavy breathing. So far, I thought, Mrs Pringle was winning hands down.
There certainly were some fine late gooseberries at the end of the garden, yellow translucent beauties dangling from the thorny branches.
Mrs Pringle eyed them greedily.
'Do help yourself to a picking,' I said, 'if you could use some.'
'Very nice of you,' she replied, still unsmiling. 'Lucky I brought my bag.'
Amy and I helped, but Mrs Pringle's speed at gooseberry-picking was amazing. Within ten minutes, three bushes were stripped and the oilcloth bag almost full.
She straightened up reluctantly. 'I must say I like a nice gooseberry pie,' she said, 'and now I'd best be off. Pringle gets in about now.'
At the gate she stopped.
'I take it you'll need me on a Wednesday afternoon to do your house over? Been doing it for years now. If Wednesdays don't suit, what about Tuesdays?'
I took a deep breath. 'Can I let you know? I should like to see if I can manage on my own for a bit. But thank you for the offer.'
For the first time that afternoon, she looked taken aback. 'Are you saying you don't want me?'
'Not at the moment. Let's see how things go.'
Without a word she opened the gate and set off down the lane, her heavy bag swinging dangerously.
'Well!' exploded Amy. 'What a miserable old faggot!'
This archaic expression from my childhood days made me laugh.
'So rude,' continued Amy, 'criticizing my sandals! And greedy too! Why, she's got enough gooseberries there to make two dozen pies.'
'So you don't take to Mrs P? She did offer to help in the house, you know.'
'I thought you handled that very well,' said Amy, with rare praise. 'Personally, I wouldn't employ her for a pension, the wicked old harridan.'
'Let's unlock the house and have a look round. It might lower our blood pressure after that encounter.'
'We certainly need something,' agreed Amy, following me.
Later that evening we discussed the afternoon's events, and made our plans for the next few days.
Amy had volunteered to help me paint the downstairs walls. Upstairs, we agreed, could wait until later. We proposed to go into Caxley in the morning and choose emulsion paint and brushes, and also to buy curtaining material for the main living room, at present my predecessor's dining room. For all Amy's elegance, she was a great one for practical pursuits and I welcomed her cooperation in the decorating project.
My furniture was due to arrive at the end of the week and, all being well, we should have the house clean and ready for it.
'Without Mrs Pringle's assistance?' queried James, much amused by his wife's volte-face on the employment of Mrs Pringle in my house.
'Absolutely without!' snapped Amy.
'I bet she comes along to see what we're doing though,' I prophesied.
'If I know anything about village life, she won't be the only one,' rejoined James.
He was right. Over the next few days, as Amy and I toiled with our brushes and some rather exquisite pale grey paint, we had several visitors.
The first was more than welcome, for it was Bob Willet.
'I really come up to get your twitch out,' he volunteered.
It sounded rather a medical matter until Amy said she had far too much couch grass in her border, and I remembered the country name for this wretched weed.
'But I could give you a hand in here instead,' he offered, looking at the half-done walls and then the floor boards.
'You wants to wipe up with a bit of damp rag as you go,' he said. 'Shall I take a turn?'
'No, no,' we protested, 'you carry on in the garden, and we'll muddle along in here.'
He went rather reluctantly.
Our next visitor was the milkman, a cheerful young man with a splendid black beard, who said he would come on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday if that was all right?
We said it was.
'And if I was you,' he added, looking at the floor, 'I'd wipe up that paint as it falls.'
An hour later, Mrs Partridge, the vicar's wife, called in and gave us a welcome invitation to tea any time between four and five.
'Just when you've finished one wall, or something,' she said vaguely, 'in fact whenever it's convenient to stop.'
She admired our handiwork in a most satisfactory way, and only noticed the floor as she went out.
'Ah now! I believe Bob Willet carries a piece of wet cloth with him when he does work for us, and he wipes up the paint as he goes along. He says it saves a lot of trouble later.'
We said that he had been kind enough to pass on this tip already.
At two-thirty, Mrs Pringle appeared, paused on the threshold, and drew a deep breath.
'Oh dear, oh dear!' she groaned, shaking her head. 'My poor floor!'
I did not like to point out that it was in fact my floor, but invited her in to see our efforts. She approached gingerly, stepping over the larger blobs of paint with exaggerated care.
'I didn't come in here to pry,' she said unnecessarily, 'but as I was going over to the school to check the supplies was all right for next term, I thought I'd just look in.'
'Well, what do you think of it?' I asked, inviting the bolt from the blue.
'It'll show the dirt,' she said, and departed.
The rest of the summer holiday was spent mainly in getting the house to rights. As all those who have moved house know, nothing was straightforward.
Two of the windows were stuck fast, and needed Mr Willet and a hefty friend to release them, breaking one pane in the process. It meant a trip to Caxley for more glass.
The man who laid the stair carpet forgot to put the underlay down first, the excuse being that his wife had given birth to twins in the early hours of the morning and it had unsettled him. I wondered what it had done to his wife.
The removal men were three hours late and made a mark on the beautiful new dove-grey paint. A nasty scratch had appeared on the side of my dressing table, but the men assured me that if I put it 'best side to London', meaning with that side against a wall, where I did not want it, then all would be well.
I never did find the tea cosy or the egg timer. My guess is that they went back in the van.
But gradually things were sorted out, and I grew fonder and fonder of my home as the days passed. Callers still dropped in with some excuse or other, and I was proud to show them over my new abode.
I also paid a few calls myself, and one of them was to see Miss Clare who lived at Beech Green, and would be my only member of staff and sole companion in our labours together. I had taken to her at first sight, when I had come for the interview some months earlier. It had been a great comfort to know that Miss Clare, who had taught at Fairacre for many years, would be there as my support when I took up the post.
Her cottage could have graced any of the 'Beautiful Britain' type of calendar. It had been thatched first by her father, and the straw renewed by a young local man who was making his name as a master thatcher.
The garden was the perfect cottage mixture of summer flowers at the front and a vegetable patch and lawn at the back. There were even hollyhocks doing their best to reach up to the eaves, with pansies and pinks at their feet.
In the distance, the downs shimmered in a blue haze of heat, and I was glad to prop my bicycle against the fence, and to sit in the cool sitting room. A fat tabby cat basked on the window sill, a lark poured forth a torrent of song above the field beyond the garden, and I could understand the inner peace which gave Dolly Clare such strength and calm.
She was a tall slender woman, dressed this afternoon in a dark blue linen frock which high-lighted her white hair and pale skin.
She had been a pupil at Fairacre School, and had then gone on to become a pupil teacher, encouraged by the head master of that time Mr Wardle, who recognised in this quiet fourteen-year-old the makings of a first-class teacher. She and her life-long friend Emily Davis had trained together, and both taught locally for many years, known officially as 'uncertificated teachers' but, like so many thus designated, were efficient, dedicated and much-loved by pupils and parents.
The vicar had told me all this. It was plain that he had a high regard for Miss Clare, as I had too.
We discussed a few practical matters concerned with the timetable and then, inevitably, the subject of Mrs Pringle cropped up. I told her that I had decided to postpone any firm invitation to the lady about working in the school house, and she nodded approval.
'She's not an easy person, as no doubt you've guessed. In any case, the position now is rather different. When we had a head master it was the wife who coped with the domestic side. Now you have to deal with her at school and in your home. Very wise to take it step by step.'
'Why is she so difficult?'
Miss Clare smiled. 'I expect present-day psychologists would blame some childhood drama, or even heredity, as no one these days seems to accept the fact that evil is as rife today as ever it was.'
'I wouldn't have labelled Mrs P. as evil,' I protested, 'just a bit of a misery.'
'That's true. But why she is such a misery is a mystery. I suppose I've known her longer than most people in Fairacre.'
'Did you teach her?'
'No. She was brought up in Caxley. Born there too, I believe, and was the first child. But she had relations in Fairacre, an aunt and uncle, though whether they were blood relatives or simply friends of her parents, I don't know, but they used to have her for visits during the school holidays, so I used to see her about.'
'What was she like as a child?'
'Much the same as she is today,' said Dolly Clare, looking amused. 'The first time I came across her, she had been sent to this aunt because the next child was coming into the world. She was particularly resentful, but we all put it down to temporary jealousy, quite common on these occasions.'
'Did it pass?'
'No, I can't say it did. And when another baby turned up, it made things worse. Mind you, I don't think the two younger children were the reason for Maud being so gloomy. I realise now that she was that by nature, and time has proved it.'
'Well, I'm glad to know that my reaction to the lady is pretty general. And I'm glad to know her name is Maud!'
'But don't dare to call her by it,' warned Miss Clare. 'She would look upon that as terribly familiar! No, "Mrs Pringle" it must be, I assure you.'
I promised to remember.
On the night before term began, as I prepared for bed, I thought how lucky I was to have obtained this post in Fairacre. I had already made friends with Dolly Clare, Bob Willet, the kind vicar and his wife, and was on nodding terms with most of the other local inhabitants.
My house was as straight as one could reasonably expect in the time, although the new curtains, being made by someone Amy had recommended, were still not done, and there was a strange ticking noise at night which I could not track down, and only prayed that it was not something gruesome like death watch beetle at work.
The school gleamed from Mrs Pringle's labours, and a strong smell of yellow soap, mingled with carbolic disinfectant, greeted one as the door opened.
The stocks of books, stationery, and educational apparatus seemed adequate, but I had been busy with a list of further requirements which I hoped would soon be forthcoming.
All in all, I climbed into bed that night in a hopeful frame of mind. Amy had once said: 'Will you feel lonely out there in the wilds?' I could truthfully say that I had been so enchanted with my house and garden, the village and the glorious countryside surrounding it, that I had not felt the faintest qualm of loneliness.
And tomorrow, I had no doubt that I should have other responsibilities which were equally absorbing. I was not so euphoric as to imagine that all would go smoothly. There would be frustrations and annoyances, possibly hostility from parents who preferred Mr Fortescue's régime, but these thoughts did not stop me from sleeping from ten o'clock until nearly seven the next morning.
CHAPTER 3
Bob Willet Remembers
&nbs
p; There was no doubt about it, as all agreed, Mrs Pringle was a good worker.
Her chief passion was a fierce proprietory love of the two coke-burning stoves which dominated the infants' room and my own. These monsters had heated the school throughout many winters extremely efficiently. Each was surrounded by a sturdy fireguard which had a brass top running round it. On this we dried gloves, socks, tea towels, scarves and very useful it was.
In bitterly cold weather I warmed the children's milk in a saucepan kept for the purpose. Children with earache or toothache were placed with the afflicted area close to the stove's blessed warmth. All in all, each provided the classroom with much varied comfort.
But Mrs Pringle's attitude towards these charges of hers went far beyond our general gratitude and affection. Like the Romans, she had her household gods, and top of the list were Fairacre School's two coke stoves.
She did her duty conscientiously with the desks, cupboards, floors and so on, and also came to wash up the dinner things. Everything sparkled, tea towels were snowy, the zeal with which she laboured was highly commendable. But it was the stoves which meant most to her.
At the beginning of the term they had shone like jet with lots of blacklead and Mrs Pringle's elbow grease. The cast-iron lids were much indented with a pattern, and by dint of skilful use of a blacklead brush these ornamentations stood out splendidly.
A light dusting was really all that was needed to keep them in pristine condition for the first few weeks. Even so, I noticed that the blacklead brush appeared now and again to keep them just as Mrs Pringle wanted.
We were lucky with the weather, and it was not until half term that the first chill winds of October began to blow.
I had been looking forward to tidying up the garden. Fallen leaves were strewn everywhere, and the dead spires of lupins, delphiniums and other summer plants needed cutting down. The lawns were in need of mowing and edging, and the plum tree had surpassed itself with a harvest of yellow fruit which bid fair to nourish the whole village.
