The Great Village Show

by Alexandra Brown

  There’s a wall montage too, showing the school right back to the beginning. In the centre there’s a glorious, whole school picture, of the Victorian children all lined up and looking very serious – not like nowadays; when we had the photographer in to do the leavers’ picture last summer, it took the best part of ten minutes for us to stop the children laughing and fooling around and to make them stand nicely and smile without doing silly faces. This contrast in children’s behaviour can also be seen in the ‘then and now’ section – a wonderful collection of photos taken in the same spot outside the main school door: Victorian children shivering as they shovel snow, versus our modern-day children wrapped up warm in padded anoraks, all laughing as they throw snowballs at each other, including us teachers.

  God, I really hope the inspectors’ report comes back in favour of keeping the school open. It’d be like losing a dear friend if not, and I’m not entirely sure the village would cope … I, for one, will be devastated. I’ve been putting on a brave face, my default setting, but what else can I do? I can’t let the children or parents see me worried or upset about it. That would never do. And if last week’s school governors’ meeting is anything to go by, then there really is a serious possibility that the school will have to close. The treasurer had been through all the figures and said it didn’t look good, and someone backed this up from the council, explaining that the dwindling numbers means my staff aren’t being utilised to the max. I tried to say that the school is more than that – it’s the heart of the community, part of Tindledale’s history, I even mooted the idea of us getting a preservation order – the school building must be listed or something, or what about the fields surrounding it? Surely they’re worth some money; maybe we could sell one to a farmer and raise enough cash to keep the school open. To which I was told, the school building wouldn’t be demolished in any event. No! Most likely sold to a developer and ‘rejuvenated’ into modern apartments. Silence ensued after I pointed out that people who live in apartments have children too, that need to be educated. And nobody wants a seven-mile-by-bus school run. But my pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears.

  Hmm, but there is some good news – I’ve heard a rumour that a small housing development has been proposed on the outskirts of the village. Let’s just hope the busybodies on the parish council don’t put a stop to that. They have before, forming a protest to protect our village services; they were concerned about appointment availability at Dr Ben’s surgery, the queuing time in the post office and chemist, etc. They worry about these things being affected when outsiders come to live here, but then complain when business is dwindling, the shops are empty and my lovely little village school is threatened with closure. If Tindledale is to thrive, then it needs new blood, otherwise we’ll end up like Little Branhill, the village on the far side of Stoneley that’s now a glorified drive-through after the tiny row of shops closed and became houses and the petrol station was bulldozed before being turned into a council refuse depot that the villagers are constantly complaining about. They say that, on a bad day, the stink is worse than when a septic tank is emptied, and that’s saying something … Jack actually threw up one time when Vicky and Gabe, next door, had their tank emptied; he was off school with a tummy bug which probably didn’t help, but even so … The smell permeates the air for ages.

  After popping the key for the notice board back into my handbag, I walk across the cobbled road to see what developments might be taking place in the double-fronted empty shop – the one where I’m assuming Dan will open his high-end restaurant. It’s all very exciting. And it definitely looks as if things are progressing, as there’s one of those pink planning notices pinned to the timber doorframe, but I can’t see what the words say as they have faded from being outside for too long in the sun. Oh well, this all looks very promising though, and my anticipation heightens when I press my nose to the window and see that the inside has been stripped, the walls freshly plastered and there is a stack of dining chairs in the middle, swathed in bubble wrap. Well, that settles it, Dan is opening a fine dining restaurant. I must remember to pop in and update Lawrence as he’ll be thrilled too – such a bonus for his B&B guests, a Michelin-starred restaurant within walking distance … Well, almost, as it is a bit of a hike from his place, but then the bus runs on the hour every hour, and I’m sure Lawrence could come to some arrangement with Tommy and his taxi service.

  I cross back over the road and continue on past the florist’s, chemist’s, antiques shop, and I’ve just reached the butcher’s, when the door opens and Jessie troops the triplets out on to the pavement, one by one, in front of me.

  And my heart stops! Momentarily, I’m convinced of it. Adrenalin laced with panic surges through me so fast it makes me feel nauseous.

  ‘STOOOOOP!’ I yell, flinging my arm around little Millie as she goes to bounce off the kerb into the road, narrowly missing a mud-splattered old Land Rover trailing an empty sheep transporter with a black and white collie dog inside, enjoying the sunny breeze as it pops its head out in between the metal-grilled side. ‘Hold on sweetheart.’ I pull Millie into me, just in time. The trailer, travelling far too fast, very nearly ran her right over.

  ‘Look at that doggy,’ Millie gasps, her index finger still pointing, as she cowers in to me.

  ‘Millie! What have I told you about that? Don’t you dare run into the road!’ Jessie screams, slinging her handbag over her shoulder and dropping the carrier bag containing newly purchased meat from the butcher’s on to the pavement in her panic to get to Millie. The other two children stand silently, staring at their shoes. ‘That is really naughty! Really, really naughty. Do you hear me?’ But Millie can’t hear anything because she’s sobbing so hard as she tries to hide behind me, her little hands clutching the back of my cord skirt, and I’m reluctant to intervene and make Jessie feel undermined in front of her children, but she seems to be disproportionately furious. Her face is rhubarb red and she’s gripping the strap of her handbag so tightly, I can see the whites of her knuckles, like pearls ready to pop right through the skin. ‘And stop hiding behind Meg, she doesn’t want her skirt ruined with all your tears … why do you always have to spoil everything?’ Jessie goes to grab Millie away from me.

  ‘Please, it’s fine Jessie, honestly no harm done …’ I start, shocked by the ferocity of her loud outburst. And people are looking – the WI women on the other side of the street have stopped sweeping and are now staring, some with concerned looks on their faces, nudging each other and wondering if they should intervene, while the others are shaking their heads in disapproval. ‘Don’t worry about my skirt, it’s just an old—’

  I stop talking.

  Jessie is crying. Full-on tears are tumbling down her face. Her shoulders are slouched in surrender. She slumps against the wall. Defeated.

  Instinctively, I herd the children into the little alcove in between the butcher’s and Ruby’s vintage shop, and then turn to Jessie.

  ‘Hey, come on … whatever it is, we can sort it out,’ I say in a low voice as I put my arm around her, shocked at how taut and tense her back feels, but even more so by the way she flinches away from my touch.

  I take a deep breath, and then take control of the situation.

  ‘OK. How about we all go to my house and play in the garden?’ I turn back to face the children and rub my hands together enthusiastically. ‘It’s a glorious afternoon – we could even go for a paddle in the stream, what do you say?’ I ask, putting on an overly cheery voice for the children’s benefit; all three of them are standing silently now, and it’s odd. They don’t respond. They don’t even look at Jessie to see if my proposal is OK. It’s as if they’re quite used to seeing their mother break down and sob. It’s truly hard to tell what they’re thinking as each has their head bowed. Motionless and still. And it’s sad. And then I spot Olivia and Max, standing either side of Millie; they slip their tiny hands around hers, as if silently trying to comfort their sister. Clinging together, the three of them for re
assurance. And I’m in no doubt whatsoever now that I must get to the bottom of what is upsetting Jessie. Whatever it is, whatever is bothering her … surely it can’t be irreparable? Every time we’ve met up, it’s as if she wants to tell me something, to confide in me, but she seems to be too afraid or guarded, and then we always seem to get interrupted. So if we can just have some quiet time together, then perhaps Jessie will feel able to confide in me.

  After gathering up Jessie’s shopping, I slip my right arm through hers, very gently, and tell the children to carry on holding hands and for Max on the end to hold on tight to my skirt so we can go in a little convoy together to the bus stop, safely, so nobody inadvertently darts into the road again and nearly gets run over by a speeding trailer with an appealing-looking sheepdog inside. I look ahead across the village square and see to my relief that the bus is there, about to leave. I catch Don the driver’s eye and he nods to show that he’ll wait for us. Wonderful. As I really can’t imagine Jessie is in any fit state to drive her old Mini through the village and down the hill behind the church to my house right now. No, we can sort the logistics of all that out later, and my bike too, but it’ll be fine leaning against the bench by the war memorial for a bit … as long as the WI ladies don’t mistake it for scrap metal, which is entirely possible, given the state of it, and sweep it away with their unforgiving brooms.

  Back at my cottage, and we’re lounging in striped deckchairs in the garden. The children are playing happily in the long grass, barefoot and tummies full, after devouring several rounds of sandwiches filled with my homemade blackberry jam, followed by Party Ring biscuits and packets of Iced Gems. I figured it might not matter just this once for them to have a cobbled-together lunch. I know Jessie is quite particular about their diet, but seeing as she was rather fragile when we arrived, hurriedly taking herself off to the bathroom to ‘get myself together, if you don’t mind’, I thought it best to just get on with it. So after quickly rummaging through the pantry, I found some of Jack’s treats. He might not be a little boy any more, but that doesn’t stop him from still being fond of a Party Ring or two and, despite my misgivings about Tommy in the village store selling so much sugar to my school children, he does keep all the old favourites in stock. Which reminds me:

  ‘Who’d like an ice cream?’ I say to the triplets, who are rolling around on a blanket now, taking it in turns to feed Blue, who we’ve put into an upturned empty wooden wine crate as a makeshift pen, with some hay and several large dandelions that the children found for him earlier, along with a fresh crop of crunchy carrots – the children particularly love feeding them to him, giggling when he twitches his nose and tickles their fingers as he munches the carrots down in record time.

  ‘Me! Me!’ they all shout, springing to their feet and jumping up and down.

  ‘Sorry,’ I turn to Jessie in the deckchair next to me. ‘Is that OK with you? I should have asked first,’ I say, realising she most likely won’t thank me for overloading the children with sugar. It’ll be their bedtime soon and they’ll still be working off the sugar high.

  ‘Yes, fine. And thank you,’ she says solemnly, lifting her mug of tea, ‘for everything this afternoon … I’m so sorry for crying on you like that. And for being so bad tempered and aggressive with Millie, I feel so asham—’

  ‘Hey, please … Jessie, it’s fine. Like I said earlier, no need to apologise. We all have our limits, we all snap sometimes. You’re only human, and children can be extremely challenging at times. Trust me, I know, I see it every day – parents at the end of their tether, telling their darlings to “behave or else …” through gritted teeth, smiles firmly in place, hoping nobody notices how exasperated they really are. And you must be exhausted – moving house is a major life event,’ I say diplomatically, while thinking her husband, the charming Mr Cavendish, clearly isn’t very charming at all. No, in fact, he’s an utter shit. He’s responsible for the burn mark, it turns out. Yes, Millie told me what she saw when Jessie was in the bathroom. She said, ‘Daddy got cross because his shirt was creased up; he tried to help Mummy, but when he took the iron from her it dropped on Mummy’s arm. Because she’s so clumsy, Daddy told me that.’ Poor Millie, she seems to have the weight of the world on her little shoulders, her face was very earnest, her little brow furrowed in concern as she asked me if this is the reason why Mummy cries all the time. ‘Even at night, when she’s supposed to be asleep.’ Millie said she’s heard her and is worried about it.

  I think I managed to hide the feelings of anger and shock from my face. And now I need to work out what I should do with this information, because as a teacher I have a duty of care to the children. They attend the nursery that’s attached to my school, and if they’re witnessing domestic violence, which might explain their withdrawn behaviour, then I can’t pretend that I don’t know … I should tell Becky, she’s the designated person for safeguarding the nursery children. Jessie may not thank me if she thinks I’m interfering, but I trust Becky implicitly – she’ll know what to do.

  ‘Strawberry or vanilla?’ I ask the children, before turning to Jessie. ‘Would you like one too?’ And she hesitates before replying, ‘Um, yes please …’ and she smiles, albeit a weak, watery one, but it’s a start.

  ‘Good. So hands up who wants vanilla …’ I lift myself out of the deckchair, and none of the children moves. ‘Strawberry?’ I laugh, figuring it important to lighten things up a bit for them. They don’t appear to have had much fun for a while, and Becky has told me, in confidence of course, that the triplets also seem very withdrawn when they come for their sessions with her at the nursery. Three spindly short arms fly up. ‘With sauce and sprinkles?’ and the arms reach up even higher, accompanied by three very wide grins and bobbing bodies, bouncing up and down in excitement. ‘Perfect.’ I smile too, thinking how nice it is to see them behaving like ordinary, happy, bubbly children for a change. ‘Shan’t be a minute then.’ And the children run off down to the long grass, laughing and whooping as they go.

  Jessie smiles properly for the first time this afternoon, grinning proudly as she watches the triplets tumbling around happily. Earlier, when the children were at the end of the garden and out of earshot, Jessie told me how unhappy she is in her marriage, how controlling Sebastian is, how she allowed herself to be swept away by him at first, only to feel lost and isolated later when she found out about his affairs … but she couldn’t elaborate further as just then Millie came rushing up to show her a nice hairy caterpillar she’d found.

  Ten minutes later, I emerge from the house with a tray holding five bricks of strawberry ice cream, each wedged between two wafers and slathered in raspberry sauce and rainbow sprinkles. I’ve added a couple of glasses of my fizzy elderflower wine for good measure – we might as well go the whole hog. Talking of elderflower wine, Lawrence called by last night to pass on a message from Dan – can he spend the day with me tomorrow to go through my wine cellar? He’s very keen for us to put together an ‘eclectically appealing selection of beverages’ for show day, apparently, which should be interesting. I’m going to try not to revert to my scary teacher persona, seeing as the village does actually need his help – so as long as he behaves himself, then everything should be fine. I’m sure I can put up with Dan Wright for one day …

  The children come running and, after I’ve dished out the ice creams and set them up with a length of kitchen roll each to mop their fingers and faces, they go and sit contentedly back on the blanket with Blue.

  ‘Here you go,’ I say to Jessie, offering her the tray. She takes an ice cream and tears off a piece of kitchen roll. ‘And after that, there’s a glass of chilled elderflower wine for you.’

  ‘Not for me, thanks. I don’t feel like drinking. But the ice cream is lovely.’ Jessie licks her lips after running a finger down the side of the ice-cream slab. ‘I haven’t had one of these for years.’ She pauses to ponder. ‘I must have been a kid, last time, back home …’ she nods. ‘Yes, Dad used to make them. He’d
buy a box of these wafers in our village shop. They were happy times.’ Jessie’s face softens.

  ‘Ahh! Well, guess where these came from? Yep, the village store,’ I laugh, tapping the side of my wafer, remembering last time Jack was home – he was getting over the end of freshers’ flu and asked for an ice-cream sandwich – said it was the only possible thing to make him feel better … He was exactly the same as a little boy. ‘Heaven knows how long the wafers have been on the shelf, I’m not sure Tommy is very particular when it comes to checking the stock.’ I shake my head and take a bite of the deliciously creamy treat.

  ‘Well, it tastes fine to me,’ Jessie says, slipping her ballet pumps off and wiggling her toes in the warm grass. ‘Mind you, the wafer is a little chewy come to think of it.’ And we both giggle.

  We finish eating, and I hand Jessie some more kitchen roll. She has a blob of raspberry sauce on her floaty white long-sleeved T-shirt.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says, dabbing the sauce. ‘I’m so clumsy …’ She smiles wryly and a short silence follows.

  ‘Clumsy? Are you really?’ I ask her gently. And Jessie looks at me before lowering her eyes. We both know what I’m referring to.