(1/20) Village School

by Miss Read

  Beside his own bed, so close that he could touch the grey army blanket that covered it, was an iron bedstead containing his two younger sisters. They slept soundly, their matted heads close together on the striped ticking of a dirty pillow which boasted no such effete nonsense as a pillow-slip. Their small pink mouths were half open and they snored gently.

  Next door, in his parents' bedroom, he could hear the baby whimpering. He was devoted to this youngest child and suffered dreadfully in sympathy when it cried. Its small red fists and bawling mouth affected him deeply and he would do anything to appease its wants. He wished his mother would let him hold it more often, but she was impatient of his offers of help and pushed him out of her way.

  'Mind now,' he heard his father shout, 'you do as I say. He can pay for what he's had, but you put him up summat same as me!'

  To Joseph, listening aloft, these were sad words, for although he too had dwelt on the new experiences of the day, as had the boy next door, and though the plasticine, milk bottles, desks and children had all made their lasting impression on his young mind, it was the dinner, warm and plentiful, the plums and, most of all, those three swimming platefuls of golden custard, that had meant most to young Joseph Coggs.

  Two fat tears coursed down his face as, philosophically, he turned on his creaking bed and settled down to sleep.

  Mr and Mrs Moffat were making a rug together, one at each end. It was an intricate pattern of roses in a basket on a black background.

  It was designed to lie before the shiny tiled fireplace of the small drawing-room, which was Mrs Moffat's new joy. When they had lived above their shop in Caxley, she had thought long and often about the furnishing of a drawing-room when she should have such a luxury, and she had cut out of the women's magazines, that she loved, many pictures and diagrams of suggested layouts for such rooms, as well as actual photographs of film stars' apartments.

  If she had had her real wish she would have had a tiger skin as a hearth-rug, but she realized that her present drawing-room, which was only twelve feet by ten, would be hopelessly dwarfed by this extravagance, and that dream was put away with the others.

  As their hooks flashed in and out of the canvas, Mr Moffat inquired about his daughter's debut at the village school.

  'She didn't say much,' said Mrs Moffat, 'and she kept her clothes nice and clean. She's sitting by Anne Someone-or-other. Her mother works up the Atomic.'

  'I know her dad. Nice chap he is; works for Heath the farmer. I met him at the pub.'

  'Well, that's something! I don't want Linda picking up anything. Those ringlets take enough time without anything else.'

  'She'll pick up nothing from that family she didn't ought!' replied Mr Moffat shortly. 'Won't hurt her to rough it a bit. You make a sissy of her.'

  Mrs Moffat went pink. She realized the rough truth of this remark, but she resented the fact that all her striving and ambition for their only daughter should go unrecognized, and simply be dismissed as feminine vanity. It was more than that, but how to express it was beyond her powers.

  She relapsed into hurt silence. If it hadn't been for her efforts they would still have been living over that poky shop, she thought to herself. She wanted Linda to have a better chance than she had had herself. She wanted her daughter to have all the things that she had wanted so dreadfully herself when she was young. A dance frock, with a full skirt and ruched bodice, a handbag to go with each change of clothes; she wanted Linda to join a tennis club, even perhaps go riding in immaculate jodhpurs and a hard hat. What Mrs Moffat's fierce maternal love ignored was the fact that Linda might be very well content without these social trappings that meant so much to her mother.

  Mr Moffat sensed that he had upset his wife again. In silence they thrust the wool through the canvas and Mr Moffat thought, not for the first time, what kittle-cattle women were.

  Linda, in her new pale-blue bed in the little back bedroom was thinking about her new friend Anne. It was a pity she was so untidy; her mother would mind about that if she invited her to play one Saturday, but nevertheless she would do so. She liked this new school; the children had admired her frock and red shoes and she realized that she could queen it here far more easily than at the little private school which she had attended in Caxley. There had been too many other mothers of the same calibre as Mrs Moffat there, all vying with each other in dressing up their children and exhorting them to speak in refined voices. It had been an effort, Linda realized now, all the time. At the village school, despite her mother's warnings, she knew that she would be able to relax in the other children's company.

  The thing that worried Linda most, as she looked back upon her first day at school, was the lavatories. She was appalled at this primitive sanitation. Caxley had had main drainage, and her own new bathroom at the bungalow was fitted with a water-closet. She had never before come across a bucket-type lavatory and the memory of her few minutes there that morning, with her nose firmly pressed into her hands which smelt of lavender soap, made her shudder. She made a mental note that she would sprinkle toilet water on her handkerchief tomorrow against the perils of the day; and while she was debating which of her two minute bottles', lavender or carnation, she would use, she dropped suddenly into sleep.

  While Miss Clare and I were enjoying our tea one morning at the school-house, the telephone rang. It was Mr Annett's high-pitched voice that assaulted my ear with a torrent of words. He is the schoolmaster at Beech Green, a quick, impatient man, a widower, living with an old Scotch housekeeper in the school-house there. He had only been married for six months when his young wife was killed in an air-raid at Bristol, near where his London school had been evacuated. Very soon afterwards he had sold most of their possessions and taken the little headship at Beech Green. He spends his life fighting a long, losing battle against the country child's slowness of wits' and leisurely tempo df progress. He is also the choirmaster of St Patrick's.

  'Look here,' he gabbled, 'it's about the Harvest Festival. Mrs Pratt can't get along to play the organ tonight—one of the children's down with chicken-pox—and I wondered if you could step in. We want to practise the anthem, "The Valleys Stand so Thick with Corn." D'you know it? You must do; we've had it every Harvest Festival since the war ended and still they don't know it!'

  There was the sound of a scuffle at the end of the telephone.

  'Well, get out of the way, you fool!' shouted Mr Annett exasperated. 'Not you, of course, Miss Read, the cat! Well, can you? At half-past seven? Thanks, I'll see you then.' The telephone dropped with a clatter and I could imagine Mr Annett sprinting on to the next job, quivering with nervous energy.

  I finished my tea reviewing the evening's work before me. One thing, I was certain of plenty of amusement.

  6. Choir Practice

  THE heavy church door groaned open, and the chill odour, a mixture of musty hymn-books and brass polish greeted me as I tiptoed down the shining aisle for choir practice.

  Mr Annett was already there, flitting about the chancel from one side to the other, putting out copies of the anthem, for aU the world like an agitated wren. His fingers flickered to his mouth, and back to his papers, as he separated them impatiently.

  'Good evening, good evening! This is good of you. Anyone in sight? No sense of time, these people! Nearly half-past now! Enough to drive you mad!' His words jerked out as he darted breathlessly about. A leaflet fluttered down to the hideous lozenge-patterned carpet which covers the chancel floor.

  As he was scrabbling it up wildly, we heard the sound of country voices at the door, and a little knot of people entered. Mr Willet and his wife were there, two or three of my older pupils, looking sheepish at seeing me in an unusual setting, and Mrs Pringle brought up the rear. Mrs Pringle's booming contralto voice tends to drown the rest of the choir with its peculiarly strong carrying qualities. As her note reading is far from accurate, and she resents any sort of correction, Mrs Pringle is rather more of a liability than an asset to St Patrick's church choir; but
her aggressive piety, expressing itself in the deepest genuflections, the most military sharp-turns to the east and the raising of eyes to the chancel roof, is an example to the fidgety choir-boys, and Mr Annett bears with her mannerisms with commendable fortitude.

  I went through to the vestry to see if Eric, my organ blower, was at his post. The vestry was warm and homely. The table was covered with a red serge cloth with a fringe of bobbles. On it stood a massive ink bottle containing an inch of ink, which had dried to the consistency of honey. Leaning negligently against the table was Eric, looking unpleasantly grubby, and blowing gum bubbles from his mouth, in a placid way.

  'For pity's sake, Eric,' I protested, 'not in here, please!'

  He turned pink, gobbled, and then, to my consternation, gave an enormous gulp, his eyes bulging.

  'Gorn!' he announced with relief.

  'I didn't intend you to swallow it, Eric—' I began, while dreadful visions of acute internal pains, ambulances, distracted parents and awful recriminations crowded upon me.

  'It don't hurt you,' Eric reassured me. 'I often eats it—gives you the hiccups sometimes. That's all!'

  Shaken, I returned to the organ and set out the music. Four or five more choir members had arrived and Mr Annett was fidgeting to begin. Snatches of conversation drifted over to me.

  'But a guinea, mark you, just for killing an old pig!'

  'Ah! But you got all the meat and lard and that, look! I knows you has to keep 'un all the year, and a guinea do seem a lot, I'll own up, but still——'

  'Well, well!' broke in Mr Annett's staccato voice. 'Shall we make a start?'

  'Young Mrs Pickett said to tell you she'd be along presently when she'd got the baby down. He's been a bit poorly——'

  This piece of news started a fresh burst of comment, while Mr Annett raised and lowered himself impatiently on his toes.

  'Poor little crow! Teeth, I don't wonder!'

  'She called in nurse.'

  'Funny, that! I see her only this morning up the shop——'

  Mr Annett's patience snapped suddenly. He rattled his baton on the reading desk and flashed his eyes.

  'Please, please! I'm afraid we must begin without Mrs Pickett. Ready, Miss Read? One, two!' We were off.

  Behind me the voices rose and fell, Mrs Pringle's concentrated lowing vying with Mrs Willet's nasal soprano. Mrs Willet clings to her notes so cloyingly that she is usually half a bar behind the rest. Her voice has that penetrating and lugubrious quality found in female singers' renderings of 'Abide With Me' outside public houses on Saturday nights. She has a tendency to over-emphasize the final consonants and draw out the vowels to such excruciating lengths, and all this executed with such devilish shrillness, that every nerve is set jangling.

  This evening Mrs Willet's time-lag was even worse than usual. Mr Annett called a halt.

  'This,' he pleaded, 'is a cheerful lively piece of music. The valleys, we're told, laugh and sing. Lightly, please, let it trip, let it be merry! Miss Read, could you play it again?'

  As trippingly and as nimbly as I could I obliged, watching Mr Annett's black, nodding head in the mirror above the organ. The tuft of his double crown flicked half a beat behind the rest of his head.

  'Once more!' he commanded, and obediently the heavy, measured tones dragged forth, Mr Annett's baton beating a brisk but independent rhythm. Suddenly he flung his hands up and gave a slight scream. The choir slowed to a ragged halt and pained glances were exchanged. Mrs Pringle's mouth was buttoned into its most disapproving lines, and even Mr Willet's stolid countenance was faintly perturbed.

  'The time! The time!' shouted Mr Annett, baton pounding on the desk. 'Listen again!' He gesticulated menacingly at my mirror and I played it again. 'You hear it? It goes:

  'They dance, bong-bong,

  They sing, bong-bong,

  They dance, BONG and BONG, sing BONG-BONG!

  It's just as simple as that! Now, with me!'

  With his hair on end and his eyes gleaming dangerously, Mr Annett led them once more into action. Gallantly they battled on, Mr Annett straining like an eager puppy at the leash, while the slow voices rolled steadily along behind.

  The lights had been put on in the chancel, but the rest of the church was cavernous and shadowy, making an age-old backcloth, aloof and beautiful, for this one hour's rustic comedy.

  On the wall of the chancel stood the marble bust of Sir Charles Dagbury, once lord of the manor of this parish, staring with sightless eyes across the scene. On each side of his proud, disdainful face fell symmetrical cascades of curls, and his nostrils were curved as though with distaste for the rude mortals busking below.

  The furious tapping of Mr Annett's baton broke the spell.

  'David,' he was saying to the smallest choir-boy, 'get up on a hassock, child! Your head's hardly showing.'

  'But I'm up on one, sir,' protested David, looking aggrieved.

  'Sorry, sorry! Never met such badly-designed choir-stalls in my life,' announced Mr Annett, with the fine disregard of the townsman for the dangers this sort of remark incurs. 'Much too tall, and hideous at that!'

  There was a sharp hiss as Mrs Pringle drew an outraged breath.

  'My old grandfather,' she began heavily, 'though a trying old gentleman at the last, and should by rights have gone to the infirmary, such a dance as he led his poor wife, was as fine a carpenter as you could wish to meet in a day's march, and these choir-stalls here,' she leant forward menacingly and slapped one of them with a substantial hand—'these here very choir-stalls was reckoned one of his best bits of work! Ain't that right?' she demanded of her abashed neighbours.

  There were awkward mutterings and shufflings. Mr Annett had the grace to flush and look ashamed.

  'I do apologize, Mrs Pringle,' he said handsomely. 'I meant no offence to the craftsman who made the choir-stalls. First-class work, obviously. It was the design I was criticizing.'

  'My grandfather,' boomed Mrs Pringle, with awful intensity, 'DESIGNED THEM TOO!'

  'I can only apologize again,' said Mr Annett, 'and hope that you will forgive my unfortunate remarks.' He coughed nervously. 'Well, to continue! Next Sunday we shall have 'Pleasant are Thy courts above' and I thought we'd try the descant in the second verse only. All agreeable?'

  There was a murmur of assent from all except Mr Willet, who has a somewhat Calvinistic attitude to church affairs.

  'I likes to hear a hymn sung straightforward myself,' he said, blowing out his tobacco-stained moustache, 'these fiddle-faddles takes your mind off the words, I reckon.'

  'I'm sorry to hear that you think so,' said Mr Annett. 'What's the general feeling?' He looked round at the company, baton stuck through his hair.

  Nobody answered, as nobody wanted to fall out with either Mr Willet or Mr Annett. In the silence Eric could be heard creaking about in the vestry. There was suddenly a shattering hiccup.

  'Then we'll carry on,' said Mr Annett, jerked back to life by this explosion. 'Descant verse two only. The psalms we've practised and—oh, yes—before I forget! We'll have the seven-fold Amen at the end of the service.'

  Mr Willet snorted and muttered heavily under his moustache.

  'Well, what now?' snapped Mr Annett irritably. 'What's the objection to the seven-fold Amen?'

  'Popish!' said Mr Willet, puffing out the moustache. 'I'm a plain man, Mr Annett, a plain man that's been brought up God-fearing; and to praise the Lord in a bit of respectable music is one thing, but seven-fold Amens is taking it too far, to my way of thinking. And my wife here,' he said, rounding fiercely on the shrinking Mrs Willet, 'agrees with me! Don't you?' he added, thrusting his face belligerently to hers.

  'Yes, dear,' said Mrs Willet faintly.

  'It's a pity—' began Mr Annett.

  'And while we're at it,' continued Mr Willet loudly, brushing aside this interruption, 'what's become of them copies of the hymn-books done in atomic-sulphur?'

  Mr Annett looked bewildered, as well he might.

  'You know
the ones, green covers they had, with the music and atomic-sulphur written just above. I'm used to 'em. We was all taught atomic-sulphur years ago at the village school, when schooling was schooling, I may say—and all us folks my age gets on best with it!'

  'I believe they are in a box in the vestry,' said Mr Annett, pulling himself together, 'and of course you can use the copies with tonic solfa if you prefer them. They'd become rather shabby, that's why the vicar put them on one side.'

  Mr Willet, having had his say, was now prepared to be mollified, and grunted accordingly.

  Mr Annett began to shovel music back into his case.

  'Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Next week, at the same time? Good evening, everybody. Yes, I think the anthem will go splendidly on the day—good night, good night.'

  They drifted away into the shadows of the church, past the empty pews, the font, and the memorial tablets and tombs of their forefathers. Quietness came flooding back again. I locked the organ and went out to the vestry.

  Eric, glistening from his exertions, was still struggling with recalcitrant hiccups, but seemed otherwise in excellent health. Mr Annett was giving him a shilling for his labours.

  'And if you buy any more of that horrible gum,' I told him, 'eat it at home. If I see any in school it goes into the waste-paper basket, my boy!'

  Grinning cheerfully he clattered off down the vestry steps and we followed him into the soft evening air.

  The choir members were gossiping at the church gate, hidden from us by the angle of the wall. Their voices floated clearly across the graveyard.