(1/20) Village School

by Miss Read

  The room was lit by a central hanging bulb. It was very cold and I was glad that Mrs Pratt's business methods were so brisk that I might reasonably get back to my fire within half an hour.

  Against one wall stood an upright piano on which Mrs Pratt practised her church music. A copy of'The Crucifixion' was open on the stand. Mr Annett evidently started practising his Good Friday oratorio in good time. Two large photographs dominated the top. One showed a wasp-waisted young woman, with a bustle, leaning against a pedestal, in a sideways-bend position which must have given her ribs agony as her corsets could not have failed to dig in cruelly at the top. The same young woman appeared in the second photograph. She was in a wedding dress, and stood behind an ornately carved chair, in which sat a bewildered little man with a captured expression. One large capable hand rested on his shoulder, the other grasped the chair-back, and on her face was a look of triumph. Between the two photographs was a long green dish of thick china, shaped like a monstrous lettuce leaf, with three china tomatoes clustering at one end.

  I turned my fascinated gaze to the sideboard as Mrs Pratt's voice rose and fell. Here there was more distorted pottery to the square foot of sideboard top than I have ever encountered. Toby jugs jostled with teapots shaped like houses, jam pots shaped like beehives, apples and oranges, jugs like rabbits and other animals, and one particularly horrid one taking the form of a bird—the milk coming from the beak as one grasped the tail for a handle. A shiny black cat, with a very long neck, supported a candle on its head and leered across at a speckled china hedgehog whose back bristled with coloured spills. A bloated white fish with its mouth wide open had ashes' printed down its back and faced a frog who was yawning, I imagine, for the same purpose. At any minute one imagined that Disneyish music would start to play and these fantastic characters would begin a grotesque life of their own, hobbling, squeaking, lumbering, hinnying—poor deformed players in a nightmare.

  'I do like pretty things,' said Mrs Pratt complacently, following my gaze. 'Shall we go up and see the bedroom?'

  It was surprisingly attractive, with white walls and velvet curtains—'bought at a sale,' explained Mrs Pratt—which had faded to a gentle blue. The room, like the one below it which we had just left, was big and lofty, but much less cluttered with furniture. Miss Gray seemed pleased with it. There were only three drawbacks, and they were all easily removed; a plaster statuette of a little girl with a pronounced spinal curvature and a protruding stomach, who held out her skirts winsomely as she gazed out of the window; and two pictures, equally distressing.

  One showed a generously-proportioned young woman with eyes piously upraised. She was lashed securely to a stake set in the midst of a raging river, for what reason was not apparent. There were some verses, however, beneath this picture and I determined to read them when visiting Miss Gray in the future. The other picture was even more upsetting, showing a dog lying in a welter of blood, the whites of its eyes showing frantically. Its young master, in a velvet suit, was caressing it in farewell. I knew I should never hope for a wink of sleep in the presence of such scenes and only prayed that Miss Gray might not be so easily affected.

  We followed Mrs Pratt down the stairs to the front door. Snowflakes whirled in as she opened it.

  'I will let you know definitely by Monday,' said Miss Gray. 'Will that do?'

  'Perfectly, perfectly!' answered Mrs Pratt happily, 'and we can always alter anything you know—I mean, if you want to bring your own books or pictures we could come to some arrangement——'

  We nodded and waved our way through the snowflakes down to the gate and into the lane. The snow was beginning to settle and muffled the sounds of our footsteps.

  'I suppose,' Miss Gray began diffidently, 'that there is nowhere else to go?'

  'I don't know of any other place,' I replied, and went on to explain how difficult it is to get suitable lodgings for a single girl in a village. The cottages are too small and are usually overcrowded as it is, and the people who have large houses would never dream of letting a room to a schoolteacher. It is a very serious problem for rural schools to face. It is not easy for a girl to find suitable companionship in a small village, and if it is any considerable distance from a town there may be very little to keep her occupied and happy in such a restricted community. It is not surprising that young single women, far from their own homes, do not stay for any length of time in country schools.

  'Those pictures must go!' said Miss Gray decidedly, as we stood sheltering against Mr Roberts's wall waiting for the bus.

  'They must,' I agreed, with feeling.

  'She's asking two pounds ten a week,' pursued Miss Gray, 'which seems fair enough I think.' I thought so too, and we were busy telling each other how much better it would all look with a fire going and perhaps some of the china tactfully removed 'for safety's sake,' and one's own books and possessions about, when the bus slithered to a stop in the snow. Miss Gray boarded it, promising to telephone to me, and was borne away round the bend of the lane.

  12. Snow and Skates

  IT snowed steadily throughout the night and I woke next morning to see a cold pallid light reflected on the ceiling from the white world outside. It was deathly quiet everywhere. Nothing moved and no birds sang. The school garden, the playground, the neighbouring fields and the distant majesty of the downs were clothed in deep snow; and although no flakes were falling in the early morning light, the sullen grey sky gave promise of more to come.

  Mrs Pringle was spreading sacks on the floor of the lobby when I went over to the school.

  'Might save a bit,' she remarked morosely, 'though with the way children throws their boots about these days, never thinking of those that has to clear up after them, I expect it's all love's labour lost.' She followed me, limping heavily, into the schoolroom. I prepared for the worst.

  'This cold weather catches my bad leg cruel. I said to Pringle this morning, "For two pins I'd lay up today, but I don't like to let Miss Read down." He said I was too good-hearted, always putting other people first—but I'm like that. Have been ever since a girl; and a good thing I did come!' She paused for dramatic effect. I knew my cue.

  'Why? What's gone wrong?'

  'The stove in the infants' room.' Her smile was triumphant. 'Something stuck up the flue, shouldn't wonder. That Mrs Finch-Edwards does nothing but burn paper, paper, paper on it! Never see such ash! And as for pencil sharpenings! Thick all round the fireguard, they are! Miss Clare, now, always sharpened on to a newspaper, and put it all, neat as neat, in the basket, but I wouldn't like to tell you some of the stuff I've riddled out of that stove at nights since madam's been in there!'

  She buttoned up her mouth primly and gave me such a dark look that one might have thought she'd been fishing charred children's bones out of the thing. I assumed my brisk tone.

  'It won't light at all?'

  'Tried three times!' attested Mrs Pringle, with maddening complacency. 'Fair belches smoke, pardon the language! Best get Mr Rogers to it. Mr Willet's got no idea with machinery. Remember how he done in the vicar's lawn-mower?'

  I did, and said we must certainly get Mr Rogers to come and look at the stove. Mrs Pringle noticed the use of the first person plural and hastened to extricate herself.

  'If my leg wasn't giving me such a tousling I'd offer to go straight away, miss, as you well know. For as Pringle says, never was there such a one for doing a good turn to others, but it's as much as I can do to drag myself round now. As you can see!' she added, moving crabwise to straighten the fire-irons, and flinching as she went.

  'The children will all have to be in here together this morning, so I shall go down myself,' I said. 'With this weather, and the epidemic still flourishing, I doubt if we shall get many at school in any case.'

  'If only he was on the 'phone,' said Mrs Pringle, 'it would save you a walk. But there, when you're young and spry a walk in the snow's a real pleasure!'

  She trotted briskly back to the lobby, the limp having miraculously vanis
hed, as she heard children's voices in the distance.

  'And don't bring none of that dirty old snow in my clean school,' I heard her scolding them. 'Look where you're treading now—scuffling about all over! Anyone'd think I was made of sacks.'

  There were only eighteen children in school that day. Little wet gloves, soaked through snowballing, and a row of wet socks and steaming shoes lined the fire-guard round the stove in my room.

  I left Mrs Finch-Edwards to cope with a test on the multiplication tables and set out to see Mr Rogers who is the local blacksmith and odd-job man.

  His forge is near Tyler's Row and I walked down the deserted village street thinking how dirty the white paint, normally immaculate, of Mr Roberts' palings looked against the dazzle of the snow. I passed Mrs Pratt's house and 'The Beetle and Wedge,' where I caught a glimpse of Mrs Coggs on her knees, with a stout sack for an apron and a massive scrubbing-brush in her hand.

  'Sut!' said Mr Rogers, when I told him. 'Corroded sut!' He was hammering a red-hot bar, as he spoke, and his words jerked from him to an accompanying shower of sparks. 'That's it, you'll see! Corroded sut in the flue-pipe!' He suddenly flung the bar into a heap of twisted iron in a dark recess, and drawing a very dirty red handkerchief from his pocket, he blew his nose violently. I waited while he finished this operation, which involved a great deal of polishing, mopping and finally flicking of the end of his flexible nose, from side to side. At last he was done, and he stuffed his handkerchief away, with some post-operative sniffs, saying:

  'Be up there during your dinner hour, miss; clobber and all! Nothing but sut, I'll lay!'

  The schoolroom was cheerful and warm to return to. There was a real family feeling in the air this morning, engendered by the small number of children and the wider range of age, from the five-year-olds like Joseph and Jimmy to the ten-year-old Cathy and John Burton.

  They were sitting close to the stove, on which the milk saucepan steamed, with their mugs in their hands. After the bleak landscape outside this domestic interior made a comforting picture. They chattered busily to each other, recounting their adventures on the perilous journey to school, and tales grew taller and taller.

  'Why, up Dunnett's there's a tractor buried, and you can't see nothing of it, it's that deep!'

  'You ought to see them ricks up our way! Snow's right up the top, one side!'

  'Us fell in a drift outside the church where that ol' drain is! Poor ol' Joe here he was pretty near up to his armpits, wasn't you? Didn't half make me laugh!'

  'They won't run no more Caxley buses today, my dad said. It's higher'n a house atween here and Beech Green!'

  Their eyes were round and shining with excitement as they sought to impress each other. Sipping and munching their elevenses, they gossiped away, heroes all, travellers in a strange world today, whose perils they had overcome by sheer intrepidity.

  Playtime over, I brought out the massive globe from the cupboard and set it on the table. I told them about hot countries and cold, about tropical trees and steaming jungles, and about vast tracts of ice and snow, colder and more terrifying than any sights they had seen that morning. Together we ranged the world, while I tried to describe the diverse glories of tropic seas and majestic mountain ranges, the milling vivid crowds of the Indian cities and the lonely solitude of the trapper's shack; all the variety of beauty to be found in our world, here represented by this fascinating brass-bound ball in a country classroom.

  'And all the time,' I told them, 'the world is going round and round, like this!' I twirled the globe vigorously, with one finger on the Russian Steppes. 'Which accounts for the night and the day,' I added. I regretted this remark as soon as I saw the bewildered faces before me, for this meant a further lesson, and one, as I knew from bitter experience, that was always difficult.

  'How d'you mean-night and day?' came the inevitable query. I looked at the clock. Ten minutes before the dinner van was due to arrive—I launched into the deep.

  'Come and stand over here, John, and be the sun. Don't move at all. Now watch!' I twirled the globe again. 'Here's England, facing John—the sun, that is. It's bright and warm here, shining on England, but as I turn the globe what happens?'

  There was a stupefied silence. The older children were thinking hard, but the babies, very sensibly, had ceased to listen to such dull stuff and were sucking thumbs happily, their eyes roving round the unaccustomed pictures of their older brothers' and sisters' room.

  'England moves away?' hazarded one groping soul.

  'Yes, it moves further and further round, until it is in darkness. It's night-time now for us.'

  'Well, who's got the sun now?' asked someone who was really getting the hang of this mystery.

  'Australia, New Zealand, all the countries on this side of the globe. Then, as the world turns, they gradually revolve back into darkness and we come round again. And so on!' I twisted the globe merrily, and they watched it spin with silent satisfaction.

  'You know,' said John at last, summing up the wonder succinctly, 'someone thought that out pretty good!'

  The dinner van was twenty minutes late and I began to feel worried. Throughout the geography lesson the clang and scrape of Mr Willet's spade had been heard as he cleared a path through the playground. I went out now to see if he had any news.

  He stumped off to the road for me and I heard voices in the distance. His face was alight with the importance of bad news, when he returned.

  'They've just rung Mr Roberts, miss. He's taking his tractor out to Bember's Corner to try and right the van. It come off the road into the ditch, they says!' He puffed his moustache in and out in pleasurable excitement.

  'Is Mrs Crossley all right?'

  'Couldn't say, I'm sure; but not likely, is it? I mean, bound to be shook up, if there ain't nothing broken, which is only to be expected.' He fairly glowed with the countryman's morbid delight in someone else's misfortune. I thought of my hungry family.

  'Mr Willet,' I begged, 'do please go to the shop and get some bread for the children and tins of stew.' I made rapid mental calculations. About six would be able to go home and find their mothers there, but I should have at least twelve to provide for.

  'Yes,' I continued, 'two loaves, six tins of stewed steak and two pounds of apples. And half a pound of toffees, please.' It seemed a good mixed diet and I doubted whether the vitamin content would be as well balanced as it should be; but it would be nourishing and quickly prepared. I provided him with money and a basket and returned to send home the children that I could and to break the news to the others.

  Dinner was a huge success. Mrs Finch-Edwards and the children had heaved one of the long tables from the infants' room and set it by the stove, while I opened tins of steak and mixed up Oxo cubes and cut bread over in my kitchen, with Cathy Waites and little Jimmy as awed assistants. Jimmy wandered round the kitchen inspecting the equipment.

  'And what's this, miss?'

  'That's for mashing potatoes.'

  'My mum uses a fork. What's this?'

  'A tea-strainer. Pass the salt, Cathy.'

  'What for?'

  'To catch the tea-leaves. And the pepper, dear.'

  'What do you want to catch tea-leaves for?'

  'Because I don't like them in my teacup. I think we'll start the other loaf now.'

  'What do you do with them when you've caught them?'

  'Throw them away.'

  'Well, why catch them if you throws them out after?'

  'Cathy,' I said firmly, 'take the tea-strainer to the sink and show him with water and bits of bread crumb, while I finish this off!'

  The demonstration was successful, and when I presented Jimmy with an old strainer, to keep the tea-leaves out of his own cup at home, he was enraptured.

  Dinner was eaten amid great good-humour and to the accompaniment of metallic hammerings from next door, where Mr Rogers, complete with 'clobber' was attacking the flue-pipe. It was, as he had foretold, simply corroded soot which had flaked away and fallen
across a turn in the pipe, preventing a draught, and he departed in a comfortable glow of self-esteem.

  The snow had begun to fall again, and Mrs Pringle, when she arrived to wash-up, was plastered with snow where she had faced the wind. Her expression was martyred and her limp much accentuated.

  'If it's no better by half-past two,' I said to Mrs Finch-Edwards, as we watched the snow whirling in eddies across Mr Willet's newly-made path, 'we'll close school and get them home early.'

  'I shall have to wheel my bicycle most of the way to Springbourne,' said Mrs Finch-Edwards. 'My hubby was awfully worried about me coming on it this morning. Like a hen with one chick, he is!' She dusted her massive torso down with a gratified smirk. 'I sometimes wonder how he ever got along before he met me—with nothing to worry over, the silly boy!'

  I was about to say that, surely, she had told me herself that he used to keep pigs, but thinking that this might be misconstrued, I held my tongue.

  At half-past two the weather was even worse, and we buttoned children into coats, turned up collars, crossed woolly scarves over bulging fronts and tied them into fringed bustles behind, sorted out gloves and wellingtons and with final exhortations to keep together, to go straight home and (forlorn hope!) to desist from snowballing each other on the way, we sent the little band out into the wind and storm.

  For three days and three nights the countryside was swept by snowstorms. Only three children arrived one morning and I rang the local education office for permission to close school. The snow-ploughs came out from Caxley to clear the main roads and a breakdown lorry was able to get to the abandoned dinner van and tow it back to the garage. Mrs Crossley, despite blood-curdling rumours, was luckily unhurt.