Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis (23 page)

In the little cottage in the evenings Dolly listened to concerts and satisfied that love of music which had first been fired by Arnold's wheezy phonograph. Mary's pleasure in it increased as the years went by, for her eyes soon tired of reading and sewing, and she found this new invention fascinating. There was no doubt about it, she told Dolly, life was richer by far than when she was a girl at the farm, creeping to her attic bedroom, lamp in hand, soon after darkness fell.

But despite the new wireless sets in cottage homes, and the new excitement of modern travel, things were still difficult for those employed in agriculture. Many of the children who clamoured round Dolly's desk, eagerly trying to tell her of last night's wireless programme, were thin from lack of proper
food. The lot of the farmer, and, worse still, of the farm labourer, was as hard as it had ever been, and Dolly often wondered how long the land could support a fast-growing population. It was not enough to expect industry to pay for the foreign food that packed the little village shop at Beech Green and the rest of the shops in England. The farmer must be given hope and help to be able to contribute his share. It grieved Dolly to see the heritage of the countryside, held in trust for generations to come, being so sadly neglected.

For women a new interest sprang up during these years. The Women's Institute had a thriving membership at Beech Green and at Fairacre. Mary Clare was a keen supporter and acquired many new skills. Dolly was amused to see her proficiency at upholstery, and acted as unskilled assistant when her mother boldly re-stuffed and covered the ancient sofa and matching armchair. It was Dolly's job to pull the tough strings which drew the buttons into their allotted dimples, and very hard work she found it. But Mary seemed inspired by her new ability and from upholstery she progressed to making loose covers, going from strength to strength.

The years passed tranquilly. The spring term, bedecked with primroses and violets and loud with cuckoo song outside the school, and the remains of winter coughs inside, gave way to the pinks and roses of the summer term, arrayed in 'Virol' jars along the window-sills. Hips and haws and trailing bryony welcomed the autumn in, and new babies faced Miss Clare for the first time in their young lives. And always the highlights of the year remained the same—Christmas, Easter, Harvest Festival and the school outing and the church fête, held, as always, in the grounds of the vicarage.

To some women this familiar cycle would have proved stultifying. Dolly Clare saw nothing monotonous in it. She. liked order, she liked knowing the pattern ahead. Within the framework of seasons' and terms' events she found variety and excitement enough. For one thing, no child was like its neighbour. More fascinating still to the elderly teacher, no child was exactly like its parents. There was something infinitely satisfying in comparing the generations of the families she knew so well. There were hereditary tendencies in looks or behaviour which were interesting to study. She knew too the background of the homes from which they came, which child went to bed too late, and which was frightened of its father and for what reason. She knew which child was jealous of a newly born brother, which one pined for one, which one resented being the youngest. There was nothing hidden from Miss Clare, as both children and parents knew, and better still, she could be trusted to keep confidences to herself. In a village a silent tongue is rare, and much respected. Dolly Clare heard many secrets, gave advice when it was asked of her, and found the study of character endlessly absorbing. Life in Fairacre, she discovered, grew richer every year, and the slow measure that she trod there pleased her more than the giddy whirling of the world outside.

The news from abroad, during the mid-thirties, was disturbing to say the least of it. The domination of Austria by the Germans, and Ethiopia by the Italians were ugly reminders to Dolly Clare of the happenings of twenty years before. Surely such appalling things could not happen again in a lifetime? She pondered on the spirit of hope which had transfigured the world at the end of the first war. Surely the League of Nations could not fail?—it had the support of all right-thinking men and women. It seemed stupid to worry over the childish posturings of Hitler and Mussolini when one considered the forces ranged against them.

So Dolly tried to comfort herself, but she was not completely successful. There was something terrifyingly insane about the statements made by the two dictators and Dolly trembled to think what might happen if they were allowed the time to gain further military strength. Arrogance unchecked becomes megalomania, and it is impossible to reason with a madman. Would the dearly-bought peace be shattered yet again?

That harbinger of doom, Mrs Pringle, prophesied war for many months before Munich, and at the time of that event spoke scathingly of the hopes of peace makers.

Dolly came across her before school one morning early in the autumn term of 1938. She was spreading newspaper round the newly whitened stone at the base of the stove in the infants' room. Crouched on all fours, in an unlovely toad-like position, she stabbed vehemently with a podgy forefinger at a photograph of Mr Chamberlain waving a piece of paper.

''Opeless!' announced Mrs Pringle. 'Just 'opeless, trying to deal with that Hitler fellow. My mother, God rest her, would have called this a sop to Cerebos. Mark my words, Miss Clare, we'll 'ave to pay for this all right!'

All through that uneasy year, when a nation's conscience grew more and more troubled as one German coup followed another, Mrs Pringle's dire prognostications were cast like black pearls before the surfeited swine. The headmaster at that time, Mr Fortescue, goaded beyond endurance one hot day in the summer of 1939, sharply told her to hold her tongue.

Dolly, washing a child's sticky hands in the lobby, heard the swift intake of Mrs Pringle's outraged breath. Then the floorboards resounded to the limping gait of Mrs Pringle's substantial frame. It was obvious that her leg, always combustible in times of affront, had 'flared-up' with unusual ferocity. She stumped through the lobby, looking neither to right nor left, mouth compressed and nostrils flaring.

Dolly put her head round the classroom door. Mr Fortescue was alone, scribbling a fierce note to a dilatory publisher who had failed to send some promised inspection copies.

'We shan't see Mrs Pringle again this term, I suspect,' she said.

'That'll suit me,' replied the headmaster grimly. 'It's only another fortnight anyway. At last we shall have some peace.'

Dolly was right. Mrs Pringle sent a stilted note which said that her leg was too inflamed to use, and she did not know when she would be back.

'That means,' said Dolly, construing the letter to her colleague, who had not the same experience of Mrs Pringle's warfare, 'that we must woo her back if we want the school scrubbed out during the holidays.'

'Oh, dammit!' expostulated Mr Fortescue. 'What an old vixen she is!' He looked doubtfully at Dolly.

'Yes, I'll go,' she offered, reading his thoughts, and on the last day of term she made a treaty with the enemy.

'It's only because his lordship's going away,' announced Mrs Pringle. 'Wild horses wouldn't drag me back inside that school if he was going to be prying about. You can tell him from me, Miss Clare, I'm coming to oblige you and because I knows my duty to the children!'

Dolly promised to deliver the message, wondering privately why Mrs Pringle's strong sense of duty to the children had remained quiescent for the past fortnight.

And so this petty storm, just one of many made by Mrs Pringle, passed over, while the storm that was to darken the whole world swept closer and closer.

At the end of August, a few days before Fairacre school, freshly scrubbed and polished, was due to reopen, the evacuation of children from London began, and Caxley and the villages around it awaited the newcomers.

Dolly and Emily went to Caxley station to help. As the long trains drew in to the platform, with heads and arms sprouting from the windows, Dolly remembered that other war, so tragically near, it seemed, when she had watched her own generation on its way to annihilation. Now these younger casualties of a new war, emerged into the shimmering heat, pale faced and heavy-eyed, clutching one another's hands and weighed down with gas masks and cases.

All through the long hot day Emily and Dolly helped to sort out the children, and returned to their own cottages with two apiece. Dolly had chosen two small sisters, June and Dawn Milligan, both tearful and bewildered. Emily, as bold as ever, had returned to Springbourne with a pair of black-haired twin boys of twelve who looked as tough and unmannerly as any among the hundreds who arrived. Dolly had no doubt that Emily would win any future battles. Her own family background and many years of teaching had given Emily a rare resilience.

On the next Sunday the Prime Minister was to speak to the nation. War looked inevitable, and Dolly and her mother sat down with heavy hearts to listen to the broadcast. The cottage door was propped open. Outside, the two little girls dressed and undressed the dolls they had brought with them, and the ghostly Emily that Dolly had unearthed from the trunk in the loft. She was sadly shabby and her stuffing had shifted so that her figure was badly deformed, but the Milligan children took her to their hearts, and Dolly was glad to see poor Emily beloved once more.

The sunshine bathed the children playing by the door, and warmed the brick floor by Mary Clare's feet. The scent of tobacco plant stole into the room as they listened to Mr Chamberlain's voice. At last it came to an end. Mary and Dolly looked silently at each other, both fearful of breaking down before the unheeding children.

At that moment, the distant wailing of Caxley's air-raid sirens began to be heard, and close at hand the banshee clamour of Beech Green's began too. The two children looked up at the cloudless sky with such pathetic terror in their faces, as they clutched their dolls to them, that Dolly's own fears were transformed to fury. It was insupportable that innocent children should have to suffer in this way—torn from their homes, set down among strangers and then forced to live in constant fear! Brave with the wrath that burned within her, she brought the two little girls indoors and calmed them, and when at last they were busy in the kitchen and the all-clear had sounded, Dolly's anger cooled.

In the last war, she thought, she had seen many men go into battle. This time the battle came to them—to all of them, women and children too. Everyone would be taking part in this war, Dolly suddenly realised, and with this thought fear was inconsequently replaced by infinite relief. Somehow, it was comforting to be in it with the men this time.

Dolly had never known anything like the term that began so soon after. A London school shared the building, and overflowed into the modest village hall nearby, a budding which
had been put up in memory of the Fairacre men who had died in the 1914–18 war.

Fairacre school had never been so tightly jammed. Half a dozen long desks, which had not been in use since Dolly was a child there in Edwardian days, were pulled from their resting place in the playground, scrubbed and polished, and put back into use. Kitchen chairs were set by collapsible card tables, the nature table was stripped and furnished accommodation for six more children, and every inch of space, it seemed, was occupied by the children. At first, the teachers had wondered if it would be better to let the London children and their teachers take over the building in the mornings, and the Fairacre children in the afternoon, but this presented many difficulties. Thus for the first few weeks of the war, Dolly Clare shared her room with two teachers from London, twenty of their pupils, and her own normal class.

It did not last long. The weeks slid by with no expected air raids, and the children gradually drifted back to town, followed eventually by their thankful teachers. Fairacre was left with a mere sprinkling of visitors, the Milligan children among them much to Dolly's delight, and the year slipped away with very little incident.

It was a good thing that there had been this rehearsal, for when, in September 1940, the onslaught began in earnest, the children came flocking back, and this time they stayed. No bombs fell in Fairacre throughout the war, but two were dropped at Beech Green one clear night in 1942, and Mrs Pringle knew why.

'It's the solemn truth,' said that lady, folding her arms majestically across her cardigan. 'As sure as you're standing there, Miss Clare, it was Ted Prince's bakehouse as led them Germans to Beech Green.'

Dolly began to protest, but was overborne. Mrs Pringle, in spate, swept everything before her with awful might.

'He says 'isself as 'e opened up the oven to see if it was all right for the loaves. Twenty to five that was.
Twenty to five I
' repeated Mrs Pringle thrusting her face belligerently towards Dolly. 'And what 'appens?'

'I don't know,' admitted Dolly weakly.

'I'll tell you. Up goes the glare from Ted's oven! Down comes the bombs at
exactly nineteen minutes to five
! That's the answer. And lucky Ted Prince might think 'isself to have no innocent deaths laid at 'is door!'