Down an English Lane

by Margaret Thornton

  Maisie had always seemed the most mature of the girls, and this was still the case. She and Anne had progressed beyond the stage of pupil and teacher and were now good friends. Anne had watched her progress with interest and affection. She could tell when she was happy and she was aware, too, when something was troubling her young friend.

  And something was at the moment, she was sure of that. Moreover, she had a good idea as to what it might be. She had been pleased when Miss Foster had invited the girl for tea. It was good at times to unburden oneself to someone outside one’s own family. And if Maisie wanted to do that, then she, Anne, would be ready to listen.

  Maisie knocked at the door of the schoolhouse at precisely three o’clock. The house did not adjoin the school, but was at the other end of the playground; a greystone building dating from over a hundred years ago, the time when the school was opened, when Middlebeck was still a village.

  Anne opened the door quickly, looking bright and summery in a floral patterned cotton skirt and a white blouse, with Clark’s openwork sandals revealing her toes. Her bare legs and arms were brown and her dark hair shone as though it had been newly washed. Her blue eyes smiled welcomingly at her visitor; she did not look a day older than she had when Maisie had been in her class.

  ‘My goodness, you’re prompt,’ she exclaimed. ‘Right on the dot.’

  ‘Old habits die hard,’ said Maisie. ‘Aunty Patience used to make sure that Audrey and I were never late for school. We had no excuse, though, had we, living just across the green.’ She followed Anne into the living room which opened off the tiny hallway.

  ‘Sit down and make yourself at home,’ said Anne. ‘You have no coat or cardigan, have you? It’s such a lovely day again. We’ve lit a fire though, because we need it to heat the water, but we don’t need to sit too close to it, and I’ve opened the window.’

  A vase full of roses and sweet peas, from the small garden patch at the rear of the house, stood on the window sill, delicately perfuming the air, and the rose-patterned curtains lifted gently in the breeze. Maisie sat down in the chintz-covered armchair nearest to the mullioned window. The little room did tend to get rather warm at times, but it was a cosy and homely place with its oak-beamed ceiling and delft rack, along which was ranged a selection of blue and white plates. The wooden shelves on either side of the stone fireplace were filled with books belonging to Miss Foster and Anne, along with photographs, ornaments and holiday souvenirs. Maisie noticed an exotic creamy-pink shell, from Scarborough or Whitby, maybe; not found on the beaches there, but for sale in several of the gift shops; and a china model of a country cottage; Wordsworth’s ‘Dove Cottage’, she guessed; Anne had mentioned that they had visited Grasmere recently.

  ‘Where is Miss Foster?’ asked Maisie. Although she now called Anne by her Christian name she would not have dreamed of calling her former headmistress Charity, nor had she been invited to do so!

  ‘She has gone to have a rest,’ replied Anne. ‘At least that is what she said, but I think she is giving us a chance to have a little chat together, just the two of us. She will be reading I expect, certainly not sleeping. She is still as lively as ever. She will join us later when we have our tea. Now, Maisie, what’s new?’

  ‘Nothing much…’ She gave a slight shrug. ‘I told you we’ve been on holiday, and now…well, I suppose I’m looking forward in a way to going back to school. I know a lot of girls don’t say that, but…’

  ‘But you have never minded school, have you? That’s the right attitude to have, or else school can become such a drag.’

  ‘I’ve been helping my mum in the shop and trying to amuse our Joanie and Jimmy some of the time. But now, I must admit I won’t be sorry to see this holiday come to an end.’

  ‘It’s an important year for you and Audrey,’ said Anne. ‘School Certificate next June. I don’t need to tell you to work hard, because I know you will; you always do. You don’t find it hard to study, though, do you, like some girls do?’

  ‘No, I suppose not… I’ve managed exams and all that without having to do too much swotting. I like school well enough, but not enough to think of being a teacher, Anne, if you don’t mind me saying so. I don’t think I could ever do that.’

  Anne laughed. ‘Why should you? We are all different, Maisie, and we all have to make our own choices. Is Audrey still sure she wants to be a teacher?’

  ‘Yes, she seems to be…’

  ‘And what about you? Have you any ideas about a career? You could go a long way with a good brain like yours.’

  ‘No, I’ve no idea at all.’ Maisie shook her head. ‘I feel sort of…lost and bewildered at the moment. I don’t know what I’m doing or even what I’m thinking.’ She suddenly knew that she had to confide in Anne. ‘That’s why I want to get back to school, to help to focus my mind.’ She looked across at her friend. ‘D’you mind if I tell you something, Anne? It’s sort of…personal, although some people do know about it – my mum and Audrey – but they think I’m being silly, I know they do. And I suppose I am, really… You see, I thought I was in love with somebody; I know I was. Well, I still am, but now I know that I’ve been a complete idiot.’

  Anne nodded gravely, and Maisie could see the concern in her eyes. ‘Yes, by all means tell me about it; I’m glad that you want to. But I think I can guess… It’s Bruce, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes…’ breathed Maisie. ‘Oh dear, is it so obvious? D’you think everybody knows? D’you think they’ll all be laughing at me? Or feeling sorry for me and saying, “Poor Maisie”?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so at all,’ replied Anne. ‘I guessed because I know you very well. I know you and Bruce have been friendly over the years, and you told me once that you were writing to him. But you haven’t had a great deal to do with boys, have you, Maisie? Bruce came along when you were feeling vulnerable and in need of friends, and he was kind to you, wasn’t he?’

  Maisie nodded. ‘I know I’m only fifteen. That’s what my mum says, and I know it’s what everybody would say, that I can’t know what it’s like to be in love at my age. But I do, I really do…and I know, now, that he only thought of me as a friend; as a kid, I suppose. And it hurts, Anne; it hurts so much.’

  ‘I’m sure it does…’ Anne smiled sadly. ‘I know what it feels like to lose someone, too.’

  Maisie looked at her in horror. ‘Oh, Anne! How dreadful of me! I’m so sorry; I was forgetting about you and Bill. Well, no, that’s not true; I hadn’t forgotten about it, how could I forget? But I’ve been so wrapped up in my own concerns that… I’m really sorry. I know this doesn’t compare at all with what happened to you.’

  ‘It’s all right, dear,’ said Anne. ‘Losing Bill was terrible and I thought I would never get over it. But the pain subsides to a certain extent. And although it’s an awful cliché, life has to go on. You’ll get over this. I know it’s painful… I saw Bruce last night with a young lady, and I guessed that you might be upset. But there will be somebody else for you. Maybe quite a few somebodies before you meet the right one.’

  ‘D’you think so?’

  ‘Of course I do. Bill wasn’t my one and only boyfriend. When I was in the sixth form I was madly in love – or imagined I was – with a lad I met at a dance hall. My parents didn’t like him, and they tried so hard to convince me that he was not a suitable friend for me to have. He was an apprentice plumber. Not that that was what mattered to them; my parents were not snobs, although they did hope for someone – what shall I say? – rather higher up the career ladder. But they were right, not because of the job he did, but because they knew he was so wrong for me. I wouldn’t listen, though…’

  ‘And…what happened?’

  ‘He chucked me, to put it bluntly. He was two-timing me and I found out and that was that. I thought my heart would break, but I was going to college soon afterwards so I had other things to think about. I went out on a few dates after that – my friends’ brothers and that sort of thing – but I didn’t think seriously a
bout young men again until I met Bill. Then we both knew that that was it.’

  Maisie began to feel quite ashamed of her reaction to what she had regarded as Bruce’s infidelity, although it was really nothing of the sort. She knew that now. It was her first experience of heartbreak over a member of the opposite sex, and it hurt like mad. But Anne’s loss of her fiancé had been a tragedy, not to be compared with her own disappointment which, seen in that context, seemed quite trivial.

  ‘I’m sorry…’ she said again. ‘I shouldn’t have gone on like that. But I couldn’t tell Mum all about it…’

  ‘No, I realise that.’ Anne smiled. ‘And I’m very honoured that you wanted to share your problem with me. Now… I have something to tell you as well.’ She decided it would be good to get Maisie thinking about something else other than her own heartache. ‘Not the same sort of thing, but there are going to be a few changes of one sort and another round here, Maisie.’

  ‘Oh…you’ve not decided to go back to Leeds, have you, Anne?’ Maisie looked a little crestfallen, and it was gratifying to Anne to see the girl’s reaction.

  ‘No, not at all. I go back from time to time to see my parents, and I always will, but my home is here now, Maisie, as yours is. And I guess it always will be. No; the big change is that Miss Foster has decided to retire at Christmas.’

  ‘Oh goodness! That is a surprise,’ said Maisie. Then, thinking about it more rationally, she said, ‘Although I suppose she must be…quite old by now.’

  ‘Yes…well, elderly at least,’ replied Anne, laughing, ‘but I don’t think she would like to be told that. Anyway, she’s decided to go…and the other news is – guess what? – that she would like me to apply for the post.’

  ‘Of headmistress?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Gosh!’ said Maisie. ‘And…are you going to?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Anne, smiling in a confident way. ‘Yes, I’ll have a try, but if it doesn’t work out, then I will realise it was not to be. There may be a lot of applicants.’

  ‘But you will be as good as any of them,’ replied Maisie staunchly.

  ‘Thank you for the vote of confidence,’ laughed Anne, ‘but I expect it will be a tough contest… It’s not a secret, by the way, about Miss Foster’s retirement, but she might want to tell you the news herself. If she does then…well, you can’t pretend that you didn’t know, but we can say that I just mentioned it casually.’

  ‘OK,’ grinned Maisie. ‘I’ve got it… Now, can I help you with the tea, Anne? Setting the table or anything?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. You can put the cloth on and the cups and saucers and cutlery. Charity and I prepared the food earlier…’

  Miss Foster joined them for the meal of afternoon tea; thinly cut boiled ham with salad and triangles of bread and butter, followed by tinned peaches and evaporated milk, and finished off with homemade fruitcake and gingerbread. The cloth was Miss Foster’s best lace-edged one, with napkins to match, and they ate and drank from delicate china patterned with wild flowers, using silver cutlery that gleamed with recent polishing. It was all what Maisie termed very posh. She felt almost like a Junior schoolgirl again, aware that she must be on her very best behaviour. But the two adults did not treat her as a child and the conversation flowed quite naturally. And as Miss Foster seemed to realise that Maisie would already know about her retirement, that little hurdle was surmounted.

  Anne thought, as the girl said goodbye at five-thirty – evening service started at six-thirty and she had to get ready to sing in the choir – that she seemed to be in a more positive and cheerful frame of mind than she had on her arrival. Young love could be devastating in its effect, she pondered, but Maisie was a sensible girl and she would learn to put it behind her.

  And Maisie’s thoughts, surprisingly, were no longer solely of herself, but of Anne as well. Her friend and Miss Foster were too much in one another’s pockets, she mused. Like a couple of old spinsters, except that Anne Mellodey was not old, and neither did she look or act as though she was. So it was perhaps as well that the two of them would be parting company. But Maisie had reservations, too, about her friend applying for the headship, although she would not have dreamed of saying so. What Maisie hoped was that Anne would meet someone who might help to take her thoughts away from Bill. She did not want to see her mouldering away in the schoolhouse for years and years.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Jenner and Jackson’ read the sign in gilded letters over the door of the draper’s shop in the High Street. Lily had been the manageress there for four years, following the couple of years she had spent working at Tremaine House, helping Rebecca Tremaine with the land girls. Formerly, the rather faded sign had read ‘Jenner’s High Class Draper’s’, harking back to a time, twenty or more years before, when many shopkeepers had described their businesses in such terms. In truth, the little shop and living premises above still belonged to Eliza Jenner, an elderly lady in her mid-seventies, but not, in appearance, looking much more than sixty.

  It was in 1941 that Lily, anxious to find a home where she could have all three of her children with her, had first become acquainted with Mrs Jenner. They had got on well together from the start, and Eliza had been only too happy to have the little family living above, with Lily taking charge of the shop. They lived there rent free and Lily was paid a weekly wage for her services, but the property and its proceeds belonged to the Jenners, Eliza and her husband, Cyril.

  The elderly couple had gone to live in a small house near the railway station where Cyril could tend a small patch of garden to the rear; this had been his chief occupation since his Home Guard duties had come to an end. Eliza, until very recently, had gone into the shop two or three mornings a week, anxious not to let go of the reins entirely. And it had been at her insistence, last year, that the sign above the door should be changed. Lily Jackson’s name should be included, she maintained, as the woman had proved to be worth her weight in gold.

  Lily had been happy there right from the start, but more so, on a personal level, since she had become friendly with Arthur Rawcliffe, the man who owned the bakery next door to the draper’s shop. She had first met him when she had gone in to buy her bread and cakes; they had chatted about the restrictions and how they were affecting both their businesses. Bread had never been rationed throughout the war, but the only loaf available was what was called a National wheatmeal loaf, made from unrefined flour; somewhat unpalatable to those used to pure white crusty loaves and cobs. Arthur had told her how he was having to make do with dried egg in his cakes, when he could not get what had become known as the shelled variety. Dried fruit, too, had been in short supply, and so cakes – wedding cakes in particular – were darkened by gravy browning, made moist with grated carrot, and flavoured with rum essence.

  Arthur had had his hands full running the shop and caring for his wife who was ill with tuberculosis and never left the room upstairs. He had been helped, however, by his elder sister who served in the shop and his brother-in-law who worked in the bakehouse.

  Mrs Rawcliffe had died early in 1942, and it was then that Arthur had decided to join up. He was just over the compulsory call-up age of forty; nevertheless he had felt that he wanted to do his bit. There had been nothing to keep him at home after the death of his wife – they had had no children – and Flo and Harry, his sister and brother-in-law, had offered to take over the running of the shop in his absence. The upstairs flat had been rented to a young woman with two children who had come to the country town to escape the bombing in Hull; and when Arthur came home on leave he stayed with Flo and Harry.

  It was during one of his early leaves that Arthur had decided to further his tentative friendship with Lily, the attractive young woman who ran the draper’s shop next door. Bertha had been dead for more than six months and he could not go on mourning her for ever, especially as he was still in his early forties.

  Their relationship had developed slowly at first. Arthur had come to
learn something of Lily’s disastrous marriage and had realised he must proceed with caution. Lily, moreover, was a very moral sort of person, and until her divorce from Sidney Bragg had been made absolute, she had not permitted anything other than a chaste kiss or two. Nor would she admit, until she was a free woman again, that she was fond of Arthur – extremely fond – as he was of her.

  And now at the end of August, 1945, Arthur was coming back home for good. His wartime service had not taken him very far; no further, in fact, than to Catterick Camp near Richmond, less than twenty miles away. He had enlisted in the Army Catering Corps and his talents had been put to good use in the Officers’ Mess.

  Lily looked at herself in the mirror over the mantelpiece with a critical eye, patting her short dark curls into place, and fingering the stray silver hairs by her temples. There was nothing she could do to disguise them nor did she want to. She applied a touch of pink lipstick, the only make-up she needed to wear. Her skin had taken on a natural healthy glow since she had been living away from the grimy city, and her brown eyes had begun to shine again as they had done in her youth. She was not dissatisfied with her appearance, especially when she recalled the way she had looked at the start of the war when she had been married to Sid: dull of complexion, with greasy lack-lustre hair and dark-rimmed eyes that had lost their sparkle. But those days were long gone, and now, at last, the future was full of promise.

  She sat on the settee, idly turning the pages of a magazine, awaiting Arthur’s arrival. It was fortuitous that Maisie was out, having tea with the ladies at the schoolhouse, and Joanie and Jimmy were at a birthday party. They were going home after Sunday school finished with one of Jimmy’s pals and would not be back until after six o’clock. Joanie had been invited as well because she and the boy’s sister were in the same class at school. Lily had not planned it that way; it had just so happened that she was on her own. Arthur seemed kindly disposed towards the children and she had never tried to hustle them out of the way when he was there. If he wished to continue their friendship and if it should lead to a more permanent relationship, then he must know that her children could not be ignored.