Scenes From Literature

 “Mr Annett’s patience snapped suddenly. He rattled his baton on the reading desk and flashed his eyes. ‘Please, please! I’m afraid we must begin without Mrs Pickett. Ready, Miss Read? One, two!’ We were off. Behind me the voices rose and fell, Mrs Pringle’s concentrated lowing vying with Mrs Willet’s nasal soprano. Mrs Willet clings to her notes so cloyingly that she is usually half a bar behind the rest. Her voice has that penetrating and lugubrious quality found in female singers’ renderings of ‘Abide With Me’ outside public houses on Saturday nights. She has a tendency to over-emphasize the final consonants and draw out the vowels to such excruciating lengths, and all this executed with such devilish shrillness, that every nerve is set jangling. This evening Mrs Willet’s time-lag was even worse than usual. Mr Annett called a halt.”

“‘This,’ he pleaded, ‘is a cheerful lively piece of music. The valleys, we’re told, laugh and sing. Lightly, please, let it trip, let it be merry! Miss Read, could you play it again?’ As trippingly and as nimbly as I could I obliged, watching Mr Annett’s black, nodding head in the mirror above the organ. The tuft of his double crown flicked half a beat behind the rest of his head. ‘Once more!’ he commanded, and obediently the heavy, measured tones dragged forth, Mr Annett’s baton beating a brisk but independent rhythm. Suddenly he flung his hands up and gave a slight scream. The choir slowed to a ragged halt and pained glances were exchanged. Mrs Pringle’s mouth was buttoned into its most disapproving lines, and even Mr Willet’s stolid countenance was faintly perturbed. ‘The time! The time!’ shouted Mr Annett, baton pounding on the desk. ‘Listen again!’ He gesticulated menacingly at my mirror and I played it again. ‘You hear it? It goes: ‘They dance, bong-bong, They sing, bong-bong, They dance, BONG and BONG, sing BONG-BONG! It’s just as simple as that! Now, with me!’”

— Village School (Fairacre Book 1) by Miss Read