First impressions

In their adjoining cottages at Tyler's Row the new pupils at Fairacre School were safely in bed not yet asleep.

Jimmy Waites lay on his lumpy mattress in a big brass bedstead. The brass knobs at each corner had been polished so often that they were loose. Even so, Jimmy was proud of his bed. In one of the loose knobs he kept his treasures: a very old piece of chewing gum, a glass marble, and a number of other small things.

Cathy shared this bed with him. A small window in the bedroom gave what light it could, but an old pear tree growing close against the side of the house spread its branches too near to allow much illumination.

Jimmy's two elder sisters slept downstairs, for they had to be up first, and were out of the house and waiting at the top of the road for the first bus to Caxley at seven each morning.

His father and mother slept in the only other bedroom that opened out from the landing and was situated over the living-room.

As Jimmy lay there, sucking his thumb, drifting between sleeping and waking, he saw the orderly rows of desks; he remembered Miss Clare's soft voice; he remembered holding his stub of chalk, when he had tried to copy his letters from the blackboard, but it had not been so pleasurable. His fingers had clenched so tightly that they had ached.

He remembered the clatter of the milk bottles when the children returned them to the steel crate in the corner. He had enjoyed his milk largely because he had drunk it through a straw and this was new to him..

He sighed. Yes, he liked school. He'd have milk tomorrow with a straw, and play with plasticine, and perhaps go and see Cathy again in the next room. School was all very nice but there was nothing quite like home, where everything was old and familiar. Still sucking his thumb, Jimmy fell asleep.

*

Next door Joseph Coggs lay on an old camp bed and listened to his parents talking downstairs. Their voices carried clearly up the stairs to the bedroom and he knew that his father was angry.

'Ninepence a day? Lot of nonsense! You give 'un a bit o' bread and cheese same as you gives me,* my girl.'

Arthur Coggs also went on the early bus to Caxley. He was employed as an unskilled labourer with a building firm and he spent his days mixing cement, carrying buckets and wheeling barrows. At twelve o'clock he sat down with his mates to eat the bread and cheese, and sometimes a raw onion, which his wife had packed for him. Joseph's spirits fell* at the thought of having to take such food to school, and, worse still, of having to eat them within sight * of the good food such as he had enjoyed that day.

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 heads close together on a dirty pillow with no 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 when it cried.

'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 above, these were sad words. Two big tears ran 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 designed to lie before the fireplace of the small drawing-room, which was Mrs. Moffat's new joy.

As they worked, 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.'*

'She'll pick up nothing from that family she didn't ought to!'* replied Mr. Moffat shortly. '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 efforts and ambition for their only daughter should go unrecognized.

She relapsed into hurt silence.* 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 a handbag to go with each change of clothes; she wanted Linda to join a tennis club, even perhaps go riding. What Mrs Moffat's maternal love ignored was the fact that Linda might be very well content without these social trappings* that meant so much to her mother.

*

Linda, in her new pale-blue bed in the little back bedroom was thinking about her new friend Anne. She liked this new school; the children had admired her new 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. She knew that at the village school she would be able to relax in the other children's company. With these thoughts she dropped into sleep.

*

While Miss Clare and I were enjoying our tea one morning at the school-house, the, telephone rang. It was Mr. Annett. 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 is also the choirmaster of St Patrick's.

'Look here,' he said, 'it's about the Harvest Festival. Mrs. Pratt can't get along to play the organ tonight — one of her children's down with chicken-pox* — and I wondered if you could help us. We want to practise the song, "The Valleys Stand so Thick with Corn". D'you know it? You must do; we've had it every Harvest Festival.' There was the sound of a scuffle at the end of the telephone.

'Well, get out of the way, you fool Г shouted Mr. Annett angrily. '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.

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

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16