Village Centenary by Miss Read Read Free Book Online Page A

the other hand, this was the right time to sell, and she would probably clear forty or fifty thousand.
    Mr Roberts, the farmer, said that we should miss Joan Benson. She'd been a nice body to have in the village, and he was sorry to hear her health was obliging her to leave Holly Lodge. Nevertheless, that was a tidy little property and on a nice bit of rich soil, as his father had always said, a fair treat for root crops. To his mind it should fetch somewhere round fifty thousand.
    The price of property in our village has always occasioned the greatest interest. It was obvious that the amount finally given for Holly Lodge would provide Fairacre with an enthralling topic in the future.
    It so happened that I met Joan Benson returning from the grocer's shop about this time. She was hurrying along, as round and cheerful as a robin, and put down her basket to talk to me.
    'I've just been told,' she said, looking amused, 'that my house should fetch between fifty and sixty thousand pounds. As it isn't even on the market yet, I'm rather tickled. Does Fairacre always rush ahead like this with conjectures?'
    'Always,' I told her. 'It's all part of the fun!'

    Amy rang up one evening to invite me to dinner to meet the poets who were to take part in the Caxley Festival in May.
    'I thought it would be a good idea for them to see where it would be held, and perhaps to meet each other.'
    'How many are there?'
    'Well, I'm sorry to say I can only rustle up a couple. There were going to be four, but one is having a nervous breakdown, poor thing, and the other is touring the United States with his poetry programme. What stamina!'
    'Americans are noted for their strength and energy,' I told her.
    'Not the
Americans I
The poet, I meant. He looks such a weed too, as though walking up the steps of Caxley Town Hall would finish him off, but there he is - all eight stone of him - bouncing about all over America. I can't get over it. Not that Tim Ferdinand, who will be coming, is much sturdier.'
    'How's your weight going?' I asked, reminded of Amy's slimming efforts by these poets' obvious fragility.
    'Don't speak of it. I seem to have put on three pounds in the last week.'
    'The scales have gone wrong.'
    'Do you really think so?' Amy sounded wonderfully cheered. 'I hadn't thought of that. I'll try yours when I come over.'
    'Please do, but I warn you that mine are almost half a stone too much, and friends come tottering downstairs looking demented until I explain it to them.'
    'I'll remember. By the way, as the poets are so thin on the ground I've found a nice pianist as makeweight, and I'm just wondering if I could ask that marvellous singer Jean Cole who sang at the Fairacre festival some years ago.'
    'It's flying rather high,' I said doubtfully. 'I think she only came because she was a relation of Major Gunning's, and he left some time ago.'
    'Do you know where he went?'
    'I could find out. I've an idea he's in a nursing home or private hotel somewhere not too far away. The vicar might know.'
    'Be a lamb and see what you can do. Two poets, a pianist and Jean Cole should fill the bill beautifully.'
    I promised to do my best.
    'See you on Thursday week then. Long skirt to do honour to my four-course dinner, and make yourself as smart as possible.'
    1 blew a raspberry down the line to my bossy old friend.

    I spent the rest of the evening looking out bottles and books for Joan Benson's bazaar. The bottles presented no problem. I had three bottles of tomato ketchup, a comestible of which I partake sparingly, so two of those went into the basket, and a bottle of homemade lemon essence.
    The upstairs cupboard yielded a bottle of shampoo, and another of pungent scent, called
Dusky Allure
which had been given me by one of the children. As the said child had now moved from the district, I felt I could safely donate it. One has to be careful in a village; reputations have been ruined over just such little matters. Not a bad haul, I thought, surveying my five