Maisie’s classroom and the one next to it were really one enormous room divided into two by a wooden and glass partition. In the other half was a class taught by Miss Bolton, who was one of the local teachers. The system worked well enough most of the time, except when the other class recited their tables; one three is three, two threes are six, three threes are nine, and so on. Or chanted verses of poems they had learned by heart…
‘I wish I lived in a caravan,
With a horse to drive, like a pedlar man…’
But Maisie guessed it was equally distracting for the younger children in the other half of the room when her class repeated their tables. Except that they were doing much more difficult ones; eleven times and twelve times, they were learning now. The school was much more old-fashioned than Maisie’s school back in Armley, but she had decided very quickly that she liked it much better. It was cosier and had a more friendly feeling.
She had been surprised to see that there was a fireplace in the room, although there was no fire burning in it because the weather had been very warm for the time of the year. It was surrounded by a large sturdy fireguard. How comforting it would be, she thought, to feel the warmth of a fire whilst learning your lessons.
On the wall at the front of the room, near to the teacher’s large blackboard perched on an easel, there was a photograph in colour of King George the Sixth and Queen Elizabeth and, on the other side, a map of the world showing, in red, the tiny islands of Great Britain and the parts of the world over which Great Britain ruled; the British Empire. There had been little else of interest to look at, at first, but as the term progressed Miss Mellodey began to pin up the children’s paintings and drawings and some coloured pictures from a teacher’s magazine which she bought each month. There was one of rice fields in China and another of a tea plantation in India; they were learning about harvests in other countries across the seas as well as the more familiar Harvest Festival at home, the time of which was drawing near.
The windows were quite small and high up, almost impossible for the children to see out of, unless they were very tall. Miss Mellodey explained to them that, in the olden days, children had not been encouraged to gaze out of windows; they had to keep their minds on their work and day-dreamng was frowned upon. But it did not matter too much because the view from the windows was a familiar one of the village green and the church, or, at the back, of the school playground. Besides, Miss Mellodey took them once a week for a nature walk through the lanes and fields nearby. She taught them the names of the different trees and wild flowers and birds they saw, and they watched the scene around them gradually changing from summer to autumn.
Miss Mellodey’s desk stood on a little raised platform at the front of the room from where she had a good view of what all the children were doing. Not that she was strict or given to bouts of shouting, like Miss Patterdale had been. All the same, her pupils obeyed her, mainly because they liked her so much.
There were large wooden cupboards with glass doors around the walls, where the exercise books and some dusty ancient-looking volumes were kept, but Miss Mellodey had soon added her own collection of story books; Peter Pan, The Wind in the Willows, the fairy stories of Grimm and Hans Anderson, Treasure Island and Gulliver’s Travels. The children soon began to look forward to Friday afternoon as the highlight of the week, for it was then that Miss Mellodey would read to them from a favourite book. It was The Wind in the Willows at the moment, and she really made the characters of Ratty, Mole and Mister Toad come alive by speaking in their different voices.
But before that, on Fridays, they all had to tidy their desks, throwing out any rubbish that had collected there during the week, and polishing their own desk lid with a scrap of material and a dab of polish put on by the monitor. The desks were double ones, old and scarred with scratches and pen-knife carvings of intials of bygone pupils. There were two ink-wells and a groove along the top where they could rest their pens. The children of Standard Three were just learning to use pens and ink instead of pencils. They did ‘real writing’ too, instead of printing, but Maisie and Audrey had already learned that in Standard Two back in Armley.
Maisie’s desk partner was not Audrey – Miss Mellodey had thought it was better to mix them up so that they could get to know one another better – but Ivy Clegg, the girl from Hull, and they soon got on together very well. Audrey was in the desk next to them with Doris Nixon, and the four of them became firm friends.
Her previous life in Armley sometimes seemed very far away and unreal. She remembered to say a prayer each night for her mother and her little brother and sister, with Aunty Patience prompting her; but there were times during her busy new life in Middlebeck when she almost forgot about them. Her mother wrote to her every week, and she wrote back; but although Lily kept saying she would come and see her and bring Joanie and Jimmy, she did not make a definite date for her visit. Neither did she mention Sid or Percy, except to say that Maisie hadn’t to worry about her because she was all right.
Maisie was a little surptised, as the weeks went by, that Audrey’s mother did not come to see her either. Audrey said it was her father who had written to her, telling her that her mum had not been too well and had had to stay in bed for a while, but that she was now ‘on the mend’ and hoped to see her soon.
One day in every week, usually on Wednesday or Thursday, when it was Daisy’s day off, Audrey came across the road to have her tea with Maisie. Patience always cooked them something tasty, like sausages and mash, or bacon, beans and chips, knowing that Audrey had only had a sandwich lunch, eaten on the school premises.
There was no school kitchen as there was in some of the bigger town schools, because all the children lived near enough to go home at lunchtime. If they – or their parents – chose, however, they could take sandwiches with them to eat at school, saving their little bottles of ‘school milk’ to drink then rather than at the mid-morning playtime. The teachers each took a turn at looking after the ‘sandwich eaters’ and supervising their play afterwards in the school yard.
Patience had insisted that Maisie should go home each day for a cooked meal, especially as the school was so near. Sometimes Luke dined with them, or if he was busy on church business he would just have a snack and he and Patience would dine together later in the evening. At all events, Maisie was enjoying nourishing food and was already putting on weight and looking much healthier than she had when she first arrived.
Patience had assumed that Audrey, also, would go home – if, indeed, the little girl regarded it as ‘home’? Patience wondered about that – but she learned, to her surprise, that the child was taking sandwiches, made each morning by Daisy.
‘Your friend is quite happy, is she, living over there with Miss Thomson?’ she sometimes enquired of Maisie.
‘Yes…she’s OK,’ Maisie always answered. ‘In fact she likes it much better than I thought she would, Aunty Patience.’
Patience did not wish to pry too much or to put the idea into Maisie’s head that Audrey might be unhappy. According to Maisie, the little girl had settled down and although she did not see very much of Miss Thomson, she was quite happy because she had Daisy as her companion. All the same, Patience was a little disturbed by the situation and knew she must keep an eye on what was happening across the road.
Maisie, also, was concerned about her friend. There were things that Patience did not know about because they happened at school. She and Audrey had always been amongst the cleverest children in their class in Armley, the ones to come top or nearly top in exams, and in the weekly spelling and mental arithmetic tests. But here, in Miss Mellodey’s class, it seemed as though Audrey was falling behind.
Maisie had soon realised that the girls and boys from Leeds and Hull were, on the whole, slightly more advanced in their scholastic achievements than their counterparts in Middlebeck. For instance, they could already do proper joined-up writing and they were further on with their arithmetic and reading. Not all of them, of cour
se – some of the Middlebeck children were clever – but Maisie and Audrey had soon shown themselves to be the bright stars of Standard Three. Miss Mellodey had made no comment about this, which Maisie thought was right and very fair of her.
But Audrey had obviously not learned the spellings for the last test and she had only got seven out of ten which, for her, was a very poor mark. And in a mental arithmetic test, which was something you could not learn in advance, she had done even worse. Neither did she seem concerned that she, Maisie, had got ten out of ten in both tests. Audrey looked tired and sometimes her pale face looked even whiter because of the grey shadows beneath her eyes. And Maisie had noticed, but had not commented upon, the grime underneath her friend’s finger nails. Audrey, though, had seen her looking at them and had quickly hidden her hands behind her back.
‘Yeah, they’re mucky, aren’t they?’ she said with an ashamed little smile. ‘It’s with washing the spuds. I do ’em to help Daisy…’
Maisie guessed that Audrey was doing too many jobs to help Daisy. She knew, for instance, that she often made her own sandwiches in the morning and quite regularly washed up after eating her evening meal, still taken with Daisy in the kitchen. And another thing she had noticed was that Audrey was starting to talk like Daisy, whereas she, Maisie, following Patience’s example, was speaking much more correctly.
But she had not admitted her fears about Audrey to Aunty Patience. She kept telling her that her friend was all right. She felt a little bit guilty about that…but it was so nice living in the rectory, just herself, with Luke and Patience. It made her feel rather ashamed of herself…but she did not want to share them, not even with Audrey.
Anne Mellodey was happy in Middlebeck, as happy as she could be, that was, away from her beloved Bill. He wrote every week, sometimes more than once, telling her that he loved her, that he was missing her and counting the days until they could meet. He was not sure when that might be, but he hoped he might be able to get a forty-eight hour pass to coincide with her half-term break from school. Then maybe he could come to Middlebeck to see her? He hoped she could find him somewhere to stay? She hadn’t broached the subject with Miss Foster – Charity – yet, but she hoped her colleague would allow him to stop at the schoolhouse. Sleeping on the settee downstairs, of course; or if Charity considered that that was not really the right thing to do, then there would surely be someone in the little town who had a room to spare.
Bill said very little about his training; it was an official secret, she supposed. But reading between the lines she gathered he was looking forward to the time when he would have his wings and pilot his own plane. Anne dreaded this happening and prayed continually that there would be an end to the conflict before this should take place.
There was certainly no sign, in the north Yorkshire countryside, that the country was at war, nor even, she gathered from her letters from her mother, in the busy cities. The German bombs that everyone had anticipated would fall from the skies as soon as war was declared had not materialised. The autumn of 1939 was being called the ‘Bore War’. The people of Great Britain had lived with the threat of war hanging over them for so long that there was, now, nothing more than a feeling of anticlimax.
There were petty irritations to endure though, the chief one being the blackout; but folks who lived in the country were well used to the darkness and to finding their way around the lanes with the aid of a torch. Anne did not often go out at night, only occasionally to meet her friend, Dorothy Cousins, the other teacher from Armley. Dorothy had become more of a friend rather than just a colleague, as the two of them had been thrown together in this new experience. For the rest of the time she was content to stay at home of an evening, enjoying the restful company and the words of wisdom of her new friend, Charity, or listening to their favourite programmes on the wireless. They both enjoyed ‘It’s that Man Again’ with Tommy Handley, usually known as ITMA, Monday Night at Eight, and Garrison Theatre. It was not a very exciting life, she sometimes thought, for a young woman of twenty-four, but Anne was of an optimistic disposition, determined to make the most of this new challenge. She knew she was only one of thousands who had been forced to leave their homes and loved ones in these uncertain times.
In some ways it was good to be away from the confines of her home in Leeds. She had been happy enough living with her parents; however, as an only child, she had been starting to feel their care and protectiveness of her rather stifling, especially since she had met Bill. Apart from her two years away at college – and, even then, she had been only a matter of a few miles away, in Bingley – this was the first chance she had had to spread her wings a little.
She had always enjoyed teaching, and she was finding that being in charge of this class of children from both the town and the country was very rewarding. She could not help feeling gratified that the pupils from Armley could more than hold their own with the rest of the class. In some subjects, indeed, they were further advanced – a matter for self-congratulation – but she had the wisdom not to make any comment about this, either to the children or to the teachers at Middlebeck.
She knew that, in many things, the town children had a great deal to learn; and so had she. Until coming to live here Anne had had little notion about such things as animal farming or the growing of crops, or about the wealth of beauty and wonder to be found in the countryside that surrounded them, there in Middlebeck. The weekly nature rambles that she had instigated were as much for the benefit of Anne herself as for the children. They did not realise – or maybe the brightest of them did? – that she was only one step ahead of them, having swotted up the night before about the names of flowers, trees and birds. It was a good ruse to say, when unsure, ‘Now, can anyone tell me the name of this tree?’ (or plant, or flower). There was always someone who knew for certain; and so Anne, along with her pupils, was gradually learning the lore of the countryside and to appreciate the joy of living there.
Something she knew would long remain in her memory was the celebration of the Harvest Festival in the parish church of St Bartholomew’s. Anne had not been a regular churchgoer at home, although she had been confirmed and had attended occasionally with her mother on such occasions as Easter or Christmas. But in Middlebeck it appeared that it was considered the correct thing for the school teachers to do, especially as the school was still partly governed by the church. Charity attended morning worship each Sunday and so Anne, as a matter of course, started to go along with her.
There was something about the interior of the little church that made you feel reverent and respectful as soon as you entered. The stone arches and pillars, the dark oaken pews and pulpit, and the subtle hues of the stained glass windows were all redolent of a bygone age; indeed, parts of the church, Anne had been told, dated from the fourteenth century. It smelled faintly musty, but not unpleasant, and the chill emanating from the stone walls – how cold it must have been in days gone by! – was relieved by the gentle warmth which came up through the grilles on the stone floor. You could not help but be aware of the aura left behind by thousands and thousands of past worshippers in this small place, and the feeling was strangely humbling.
The Reverend Luke Fairchild was just the right rector for such a church, so Anne thought. He could relate both to the young and to the not so young in his parish. His sincerity and the love of the God he served radiated from him, but he was aware, too, of the day-to-day worries and fears of his flock, especially in the present uncertain times. They all knew they could go to him with their problems, both great and small.
At Harvest Festival time the church was ablaze with colour and full of the rich ripe fragrance of fruit, vegetables and flowers, the harvest of the fields and gardens, which completely masked the usual musky, slightly dusty, ages old aroma. Apples, red, green and russet; oranges and yellow grapefruit; pears, plums, purple damsons, and bunches of grapes, both black and green, filled every window ledge and corner. There was a cornucopia of fruit of every kind at one side of
the altar, and at the other side an enormous sheaf of corn. The abundance of flowers – late roses, michelmas daisies, dahlias, chrysanthemums and wild flowers from the hedgerows – overflowed from vases, pots, bowls and even jam jars. The children brought their own gifts – some large, in baskets done up with ribbons, some small, maybe just a couple of apples or pears – and laid them on the chancel steps. The congregation sang,
‘Come ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of Harvest Home…’
They had much to be thankful for, the rector reminded them. God was merciful and bountiful and He would always provide for them… But they knew, certainly the more perceptive adults amongst them did, that in a year’s time the situation might be very different. The war was in its infancy, but already there were rumours of rationing, and of digging up precious flower gardens for the cultivation of vegetable crops. And in many hearts the joyousness of the occasion was tinged with sadness and a fear for what the future might hold.
Anne had noticed, as teachers do, the friendships that were forming in her class, particularly amongst the girls. Girls were always more clannish than boys, forming little cliques of like-minded souls, whereas boys were more free and easy, making friends with – or sometimes fighting with – anyone who happened to take their fancy. A foursome that had developed was that of the two girls from Armley, Maisie Jackson and Audrey Dennison, the local girl, Doris Nixon, and Ivy Clegg, a rather shy girl from Hull. It was for this reason, because she had sensed the shyness of Ivy, that Anne had suggested she should share a desk with Maisie. She had met Maisie and Audrey on the journey from Leeds and had been touched by Maisie’s care of her new friend; she was pleased, now, that they were in her class. Audrey seemed happy enough sitting next to Doris, the pleasant good-natured girl from the farm. An interesting foursome, each of them differing both in looks and personality, but finding in one another qualities they liked and that made them want to be friends.
Above the Bright Blue Sky Page 16
