school run. But chiefly the vicar (more than his wife who knew the village rather better than he did) believed that Ruth would learn from mixing with the village children and they from association with her. Moreover, the parents of
the children would see that the vicar and his family were approachable, human, one of them.
Which they werenât and couldnât ever be, thought Ruth crossly. Her four years at Lower Stovey Church Primary had been wretched. Good intentions donât always result in good outcomes. From the start sheâd been an outsider and an oddity, held by the other children in contempt. She talked posh. Her father didnât work with his hands at a proper job. He was a Holy Joe who sat in his study among books. In Ruthâs hearing at school, the children, quoting their parents and finding the words hilarious, referred to their spiritual leader as a bit of an old woman.
But his wife, now, that had been a different matter. Ruthâs mother, prior to her marriage, had been Miss Fitzroy, last of that line. Sheâd grown up at the Manor, (nowadays a retirement home for the well-heeled elderly). Older villagers, ignoring her marriage, had continued to address her as âMiss Maryâ. The vicarâs wife drove a car, which none of the village women did fifty years ago. She drove it once a week to Bamford to have her hair washed and set at a proper hairdresserâs, and twice a year made an expedition by train to London where, villagers whispered in awe, she had her hair cut in Harrodsâ hairdressing department. The village women gave each other home perms which, in damp weather, frizzed and made the wearer look as if sheâd had an electric shock.
On her first day at school Ruth had been confused at midday by being told it was now dinner-time and if she wasnât having her dinner at school, she could go home, returning by two oâclock. At the vicarage they ate dinner in the evening. She caused hilarity by saying, âOh, you mean lunch.â Only sheâd
probably said âluncheonâ because the vicar was fussy about details like that. It was one of many faux pas Ruth was never allowed to forget.
On that first day sheâd been seated next to Dilys Twelvetrees and been distressed by the strange odour emanating from the other child. Later she was able to identify this odour as being compounded of rancid chip fat and cabbage water, the smells of which clung to Dilysâs clothes which were seldom washed. As was Dilys, come to that. To be fair, the majority of village parents wouldnât have dreamed of sending their offspring to school other than clean and tidy, the boys with hair cut to military shortness and girls with tightly-braided pigtails. But the Twelvetrees family, Ruth had soon discovered, was not as other families. They were regarded by other villagers with mistrust and unease. They, too, were outsiders of a kind and Ruth sometimes wondered if the class teacher had seated the two little girls together for that reason, calculating that individual isolation might cause them to strike up a friendship. If so, it hadnât worked. Dilys might be one of âthem Twelvetrees lotâ but she joined in the general contempt of Ruth.
Also at the school, but older and in senior grades, were Sandra and Young Billy (already so-called) Twelvetrees. Ruth had little to do with Young Billy who was an amiable, unteachable ten-year-old, given to âskiving offâ. Sandra and Dilys were poorly nourished and badly dressed. Dilys was the worse dressed because she had to wear Sandraâs cast-offs and theyâd already been cast off by someone else. On one terrible day, Dilys had appeared in a last yearâs cotton dress of Ruthâs, bought for a few pence at a church jumble sale. It was too tight in the bodice and where the hem had been let down it was a different colour.
Ruth had been embarrassed by this, but Dilys had hated her for it and