Snow and skates

It snowed steadily throughout the night and I woke next morning to see a cold pale 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 downs were clothed in deep snow; and although no snowflakes were falling in the early morning light, the 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.

'It might save a bit,' she grumbled, 'though with the way children throws their boots about, never thinking of those that has to clear up after them, I expect it's useless.' She followed me into the schoolroom. I prepared for the worst.

'What's gone wrong?' I asked her.

'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 in it! Never seen such ash!'

'It won't light at all?'

'Tried three times!' said Mrs. Pringle with maddening complacency. 'The stove belches smoke, pardon the language!* Best get Mr. Rogers to see it.'

I said we must certainly get Mr. Rogers to come and look at the stove. 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 children 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!'

*

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.*

'Soot!' said Mr. Rogers, when I told him. 'That's it, you'll see! Soot in the flue-pipe! Be up there during your dinner hour, miss!'

The schoolroom was cheerful and warm to return to. There was a real family feeling in the air this morning, because of 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 dangerous 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!'

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

Their eyes were round and shining with excite­ment as they tried 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 courage.

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 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 glories of tropic seas and majestic mountain ranges, the 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 globe 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, which, as I knew from bitter experience, was always difficult.

'How d'you mean — night and day?' came the inevitable question. 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 round eyes roving round the unaccustomed pictures of their older brothers' and sisters' room.

'England moves away?' asked a boy with some hesitation.

'Yes, it moves further and further round, until it is 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 briefly, '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 to see if he had any news. He went off to the road for me and I heard voices in the distance. He broke the 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 has come off the road into the ditch, they says!'

'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 children 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 sufficient; 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 brought one of the long tables from the infants' room and set it by the stove, while I opened tins of steak and cut bread over in my kitchen, with Cathy Waites and little Jimmy as 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.'*

'What for?'

'To catch the tea-leaves. Pass the salt, Cathy. 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, Cathy.'

'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 tea-strainer, to keep the tea-leaves out of his own cup at home, he was delighted.

Dinner was eaten amid great good-humour and to the accompaniment of metallic hammerings from next door, where Mr. Rogers was attacking the flue-pipe. It was, as he had foretold, simply corroded soot which had fallen across a turn in the pipe thus preventing a draught.*

The snow had begun to fall again, and Mrs. Pringle, when she arrived to wash up, was covered with snow.

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

At half past two the weather was even worse, and we buttoned children into coats, turned up collars, tied woolly scarves and sorted out gloves and wellingtons. We told the children to keep together, to go straight home and to desist from snowballing each other on the way, after which the little group set 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 from Caxley to clear the main roads and a lorry was able to get to the abandoned dinner van and tow it back to the garage.

At last the snow stopped, and on the fourth day the sun shone from the blue sky. The snow glittered like sugar icing,* but the temperature remained so low that there was no hope of a thaw. Mr Roberts had his duck-pond swept clear of snow* and invited the village to skate. As the pond is a large one, and nowhere deeper than two feet, mothers were only too delighted to send the children out. They raced joyfully across the road to a superb slide at one edge of the pond.

The older generation dug out skates, and so keen were they that Mr. Roberts switched on the headlights of his lorry and evening parties swirled on the ice. They waltzed, they glided, they swerved magnificently in figures-of-eight, while we younger ones tottered round on borrowed skates, or, pushed old kitchen chairs before us and marveled at the grace and beauty of those who were our seniors by thirty years or more.

Mrs. Roberts with true farmhouse hospitality, threw open her great kitchen, and sizzling sausages and hard-boiled eggs and hot toast were offered to the hungry skaters, with beer or cocoa to wash down the welcome food. For a week the fun continued; then a warm west wind rushed to us across the downs, the roofs began to drip and little rivers trickled across the lanes of Fairacre.

The thaw had come; we packed away our skates, and Mr Roberts' ducks went back to their pond again.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16