Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis (41 page)

'You should have put her teeth in again,' observed Mr Willet.

'And next morning I found her cold,' continued Mrs Pringle undaunted. 'She looked a young woman. At Peace. We had them words put on her stone actually.'

'I might get my bike out later on and see if I can do anything for Dolly Clare,' said Mr Willet.

'With Emily Davis still in the house?' cried Mrs Pringle, scandalised. 'Where's your sense of fitness?'

'Dolly Clare might be glad of a hand. You can do with an old friend when you've taken a knock like that.'

'They say the Annetts are keeping an eye on her,' said Mrs Pringle. 'Very good thing too. She's none too strong, is Dolly Clare. A shock like this could be the death of her.'

There was a glint of pleasurable anticipation in the old terror's eye which riled Mr Willet.

'Don't start thinking of double funerals,' he said tartly. Mrs Pringle bridled. Her thoughts had indeed strayed into this delectable and dramatic field. She changed her tactics swiftly before Mr Willet escaped from her clutches and returned to his plum-picking.

'The very idea!' she protested, her double chin wobbling indignantly. 'As a matter of fact, I was recalling how good Miss Davis was to my brother-in-law—the one at Springbourne. She often found him a little job when times were hard. You knows what a family he had.'

Mr Willet began to despair of ever getting his jobs done. He was about to make a firm break, and risk Mrs Pringle's displeasure, when he saw help at hand.

A large shabby pram, squeaking to high heaven, approached from the Springbourne direction. A slatternly girl, with dishevelled red hair, pushed it, a toddler clinging to her skirts.

Mr Willet's spirits rose.

'Here's one of the family now,' he said joyfully. 'I'll get back to work.'

With remarkable speed for one so thickset, he remounted the step ladder.

It was Minnie Pringle who approached. She was still known to the neighbourhood as Minnie Pringle, although she was now a married woman. A feckless body, 'not quite all there', as people said, she had produced three children before marriage, and two since. Her husband was much older than she was, a dour widower with a number of young children of his own. The combined families occupied a dilapidated semi-detached villa on the outskirts of Springbourne and seemed to thrive under Minnie's erratic care.

The house reeked permanently of neck-of-mutton stew, which was the only dish which Minnie had mastered over the years. This, with plenty of potatoes, innumerable sliced white loaves from a Caxley supermarket, and pots of strong sweet tea, constituted the household's diet. They all seemed to thrive on it.

Their clothes were given to them by kindly neighbours or bought for a few shillings at local jumble sales. Minnie's husband reckoned that his wages as a road-sweeper paid the rent of their shabby house, provided the food and left him ten shillings a week for beer and cigarettes.

Minnie found the arrangement perfectly satisfactory. After her haphazard upbringing it all seemed a model of household efficiency.

She greeted her aunt boisterously, sniffing the while.

'We've bin in your place, but you wasn't there.'

'Not surprising, is it?' said Mrs Pringle.

Sarcasm was lost upon Minnie.

'Just going to the Post Office to get me family.'

Mrs Pringle rightly translated this as 'family allowances', and snorted. This was a sore point.

'It's people like you, Minnie, as keeps people like me
poor!
About time you stopped having babies and expecting us hardworking folk to keep 'em for you.'

'I don't ask 'em to come,' replied Minnie, tossing her unkempt head.

'You don't do much to stop 'em as far as I can see,' boomed her aunt. She looked with disfavour upon the toddler who was wiping his nose on his coat cuff.

'I'll drop in on my way back,' said Minnie cheerfully. She was not one to harbour grudges. Mrs Pringle sighed heavily, picked up her black oil cloth bag, and faced the inevitable.

'I'll go and put the kettle on,' she said resignedly. 'Don't dilly-dally now, Minnie. I've plenty to do when I get home, so don't keep me hanging about.'

Mr Willet, high among the branches, echoed this sentiment, and watched Mrs Pringle's squat figure stumping homeward into the distance.

***

What a family! What a disgrace to decent people! thought Mrs Pringle, setting out the cups and saucers on a tin tray. Of course, they were only relations by marriage, but even so!

Mrs Pringle shuddered at the thought of her husband's younger brother Josh. Nothing but a byword, as far as Caxley, and further. The police of three counties had been after him, for one thing or other. If it wasn't petty thieving in the market, it was breaking and entering, or being picked up dead drunk. Or else it was poaching, thought Mrs Pringle, putting out a few broken biscuits for the children.

Yes, poaching. And Miss Davis knew a bit about that too, come to think of it. It wasn't the sort of story you would tell to Mr Willet, say, but it just showed you that Emily Davis had her head screwed on, and her heart in the right place too.

The sight of that dratted girl Minnie had brought back the memory very sharply. Mrs Pringle shifted the kettle to the side of the stove, picked up her crochet work, and sat down, with a sigh, to await her niece's coming with what patience she could muster.

It had all happened when Minnie was eight or nine years of age—the scruffiest and most scatter-brained pupil in Emily Davis's class at Springbourne.

The child's work was atrociously done. Her writing always appeared to have been executed with a crossed nib dipped heavily in black honey. The pages bore the imprint of dirty fingers, despite Emily's insistence on frequent washings in the lobby.

After super-human efforts by Emily, Minnie had begun to read. Figure work seemed to be completely beyond her. Numbers to five had some reality for the child, and Emily had hopes of her comprehending those up to ten in the future. A realist, Emily faced the fact that double figures would probably always be beyond Minnie's ken. In this she was to be proved right.

Emily concentrated on Minnie's newly-acquired reading ability, substituted a pencil for the pen with the permanently crossed nib, and began to see the child making some headway.

It was not surprising that she was so backward. Her father, Josh Pringle, was the black sheep of his family, constantly in trouble, easily led by his dubious companions, and a mighty consumer of beer whenever he could afford to buy it. Occasionally he obtained work as a labourer, but his income was mainly derived from petty thieving, or from keeping a watch for the police whilst his cronies were 'doing a job'.

Minnie's mother was a brow-beaten wisp of a woman, prematurely grey, who looked twice her age, and had long since given up the struggle to keep her home and children tidy.

Meals were erratic. Sometimes she cooked a rabbit stew for the family, or a simple pie or pudding. More often, the children were told to help themselves to bread and jam from the cupboard. There was no money to buy meat, but Josh's poaching supplied them with a certain amount of nourishment in the form of snared rabbits and hares. Now and again, he took his old gun and picked off a roosting pheasant on Sir Edmund Hurley's estate. Bob Dixon, the gamekeeper, was Josh's implacable enemy.

One night, in October, Bob Dixon sat in 'The Crown' at Springbourne. He had a pint of draught bitter on the table in the corner, and his companion was the local policeman, Danny Goss, off duty.

Bob was a taciturn individual, and made few friends. He was not particularly fond of Danny Goss, but at least they had a common enemy—poachers. And another thing, Danny Goss played a hard game of dominoes, and this Bob relished. They were in the middle of a game when old Tim Ryan came in and sidled up to them.

'Evening, Dan. Evening, Bob.'

They acknowledged his greetings with grunts, resenting interruption of the game.

Tim watched a few moves in silence, and then spoke in a low tone.

'There's some shootin' going on up Narrow Copse. Thought you should know.'

Bob stood up immediately. Danny finished Ins drink, put back the dominoes into their greasy box, and followed suit. Bob put a florin on the counter and nodded towards Tim.

'Give the old boy a drink,' he said to the barman.

The two men emerged into the cold night air. It was a light night, for it was full moon. Clouds covered its face, but a silvery diffused brightness made visibility easy. A shot rang out as they emerged, and without speaking they ran, one behind the other, along the grass verge which muffled the sound of their footsteps.

The small copse sloped at an angle to the road, and met it about a quarter of a mile from the pub. The two men entered the wood, and stood motionless for a minute or two.

They heard the cracking of twigs nearby and held their breath. From behind the oak tree which screened them they had a view of a small clearing. Across this, gun in hand, went the figure of a man, followed by another.

'Now,' whispered Bob.

He and the policeman ran into the clearing.

'Beat it, Arth!' shouted one of the men. They ran in opposite directions, crashing through the undergrowth, pursued by the game-keeper and policeman.

Bob Dixon caught his man within fifty yards of the clearing. But as he made a grab for his jacket, the man turned and smote Bob with such viciousness in the face that the game-keeper fell to the ground with a cry of pain.

The man ran off, as Bob was struggling to his feet. At the same time Danny Goss returned.

'He had a bike in the hedge,' he said bitterly. 'But I'd take a bet it was Arthur Coggs from Fairacre. Your chap called out "Arth", didn't he?'

Bob, staunching his bloodied nose, nodded.

'And I'm pretty sure mine was Josh Pringle. I'm going over there now.'

'I'll come with you,' said Danny grimly. 'They're a right pair, those two.'

Josh Pringle sped for home by a roundabout route, two fat cock pheasants thumping his thighs as he ran. He was in roaring high spirits. He had outwitted his enemy and he had paid off old scores with that satisfying crash on his nose.

Full of triumph, Josh did not fully realise the danger which he was in. The thought that Bob Dixon or Danny Goss might pursue him further that night did not seriously worry him. Tomorrow morning, perhaps, there might be a few awkward questions to face if they found him, but surely they'd had enough for tonight?

He was a little perplexed, though, as he ran, about the hasty disposal of the birds. He wasn't going to hide them in the woods or hedges. He'd been fleeced that way before by
unscrupulous neighbours. Besides, Bob knew every hiding place as well as he did. Better by far to get them home and cooked as soon as possible. The gentry might prefer their game hung. Poachers could not afford the time.

'Get 'em under the crust,' he had told his wife often enough. 'No one can tell what's under the crust.' There would be pheasant pie tomorrow—enough for all.

He found his wife kneeling before the fire, poker in hand, when he burst in breathlessly.

'Don't rake that out, gal,' he told her roughly, tugging the birds from his poacher's pockets. 'We got to get these plucked straight away. Had a job gettin' away from Bob Dixon.'

'You ain't been seen, 'ave you, Josh?' quavered his wife, Agnes.

'He didn't 'ave no time to see anythink,' responded Josh, beginning to strip feathers expertly. He threw the second bird on to his wife's lap. 'Him and that great lump Goss come after us, but we give 'em the slip. You keep your mouth shut if they turns up tomorrow. Don't know nothin', see?'

Agnes nodded dumbly, her hands busy with the feathers. She took a sheet of newspaper from the table and spread it at her feet to catch the bronze plumage as it fell. Josh's bird lolled upon the table top, its long tail feathers brushing his jacket.

The fire whispered as they worked in silence. Josh raised his head suddenly.

'By gum, there's someone outside,' he whispered, gazing at the dirty drawn curtains. 'Nip upstairs with these while I burn the feathers. If it's Bob Dixon—'

His face was dark with fury. He thrust the two half-plucked birds into his wife's arms, and began to roll up the newspapers.

'Get on upstairs,' he told her in a fierce whisper.

'But where can I put 'em?' squeaked poor Agnes.

'Bung 'em under the bed clothes with the kids, you great fool,' hissed Josh, stuffing the bundles of paper and feathers to the back of the fire.

Agnes crept away, up the box staircase to the room above, on her errand. A strong smell of burning feathers floated about the room, and Josh cursed as he picked up a stray feather or two and added it to the blaze.

A thunderous knocking came at the door. Josh ignored it. By now the bundles on the fire were black and almost burnt through. He blew on the fire to hasten its work.

The knocking came again, and then a voice.

'Open up, Josh Pringle. Police here.'

Josh swore violently, and stirred the bundles until they disintegrated. He put on some chips of wood from a wooden box nearby, and watched them burst into flame.