Changing Seasons. Summer III, part 3

Summer III, part 3 Well, this was a total surprise! What were they all doing here? What was I about to be railroaded into now? This looked like a get-Clara-organised deputation. Just goes to show how wrong I can be. And, boy, I’m glad I hadn’t said anything. Because:
“Happy Birthday!” Patience said.
“Yes!” Annette added. “You’re sixteen. You have an address now –even if you’re not living there yet. Marcus has booked your driving test. He says you’re more than ready.”
“So pour the tea,” Marianna said. “I missed Patience’s party, but I can make yours.”
I poured the tea. Feeling a bit sheepish, and that’s not me either. “Now you need to learn to trust people,” Addie had said, and I was kind of getting her point. In a very pointed way! “I forgot to ask you about the perfume,” I said to Patience, when I’d stopped blushing (and hopefully everyone thought it was just with pleasure and surprise). “Euan was debating how to present it all the way home. Down on one knee, just casually leave it around, surround it with flowers and put it on the bed…”
Patience smiled reminiscently. “He went for casual in the end. It’s kind of an in-joke between us – we used to hide little surprises when we were dating and first married. So I walked past it and did a double-take.” “He just happened to be standing there. Waiting for me to use it!” “And then it got very romantic…” “This is – really cool. Thanks, everyone.”
“It’s a girl thing,” Marianna said warmly. “And we all need girl time. When you move into your house and my four are at school, shall we have a go at that bakery/café place, you and I?” Sounded good to me, and I said so. “Ah,” Patience said from behind her teacup. “Um. I don’t want to overshadow Clara’s celebration, but…”
Annette paused with her teacup to her lips and a wicked grin appearing on her face. “Don’t tell me you ran out as well.” “No,” Patience said with great dignity. “We’re not that careless.”
“You’re pregnant again though aren’t you?” I’d caught Annette’s grin form her.
“Like they say, no method is one hundred per cent effective.” Patience sighed.
“I can teach for a bit – maybe: it depends how this pregnancy goes and how I feel. But we’re going to need a Plan B.” We all spent some time on Plan B. We didn’t manage to think of a really good one. We could cobble something together, but…
After everyone had left, I went into the shop to thank Minnie for the loan of her tea service “…your tablecloth, table, chairs and your lovely little garden. Those sunflowers are beautiful.”
“That was Lucy and Mike’s children. They had a sunflower-growing contest at school and gave their grandmother their left-over ones. I hear your school plans have hit a bit of a hiccup. Now that’s a real shame – not that Joy and Hope and that rascal Barnabas are going to have a new brother or sister, of course! – but that you’ll all have to think again. Are you still planning on doing up the building? I’m plumb-sure you’ll all come up with some bright idea.” “So Patience is pregnant again – due about February – but if it’s another multiple birth, she might be early. She’ll certainly have too much on her hands. So I wondered if you knew who owned that house by the school? We might find someone who’d come and teach…”
“Iffen there was a house thrown in? You never can tell, can you? I mean, look at them friends of Marianna’s. And this town, it’s comin’ back to life again. Ain’t like it were when you arrived.” Old Tench had got my point straight away.
“Lemme think. Artie’s comin’ round, so we can pick his brains too. Such as they are.”
“You wasted that insult. He’s not here yet. You’ll have to say it again when he arrives,” I pointed out sweetly, and got one of Old Tench’s guffaws of laughter. “Here he is, the man himself. See you put your good shirt on.”
“Glad I did, seeing as there’s a lady present.”
I liked the way these two made me feel. They treated me with a kind of… “gallantry” is the only word I can think of. Like, because I was female, I deserved extra care and politeness from them. Maybe it’s their age. There was a lot of reminiscing and “Didn’t he marry…?” and “Wasn’t that her?” It was kind of sweet listening to them both reliving past stories. Their pasts were places where they’d been happy, places they were glad to revisit.
“So we both reckon it’s the Ensteins as must still be ownin’ the place. Any way we can trace ‘em? Artie, you’re the one as is always writin’ to people.”
“I always did like writing,” Artie said a bit defensively. “And people like getting Christmas cards…”
“Keep your wig on! I was only sayin’ as you might know somethin’ I don’t’.”
“That’s not hard! Fred, now, his Lily died and they moved to be with her parents, him and their little boy.”
“And they didn’t manage to sell the place! I do remember that,” Old Tench said triumphantly. “People were beginnin’ to see the writin’ on the wall by then.”
Artie thought a bit longer, pulling up memories. I swear I could almost see him flicking through files and folders in his mind. And then his face changed as he found the right one.
“Then he married again. Remember Maddie Portland?”
“Her as married Rick Wilson? The bank manager? An’ ran through all his money? An’ drove him to work harder ‘n harder just so’s she could spend it all ‘til he just dropped down dead from a heart attack? I remember her alright.”
“She picked up Fred Enstein. Thought he was going to inherit from Lily’s parents – but of course it was all going to Lily’s sister. Nothing to Fred, nothing to the boy: they’d taken Maddie’s measure and weren’t going to leave anything she might get her hands on. Bess Preston told me that bit – said Maddie had moved on to someone else after she’d squeezed Fred dry. Divorced Fred when she saw which way the wind was blowing. Don’t think he lived more than a year after that.” “How ‘bout you writin’ to Bess then. Even iffen it’s not Christmas. An’ askin iffen she knows where that Enstein boy can be found. Seems like it’ll be his house now.”
“You could write.” There was a wicked twinkle in Artie’s eye.
“You know I ain’t one for writin’. Never was. But you can be sendin’ my regards to Bess, an’ sayin’ I was askin’ after her.” I’d never heard Old Tench speak so badly of anyone except the Lee Popeman company before.
“So, I get the feeling you weren’t exactly friends with this Maddie Portland?” I was intrigued. But it was Artie who sounded off first.
“She was a conniving, greedy, manipulating little schemer. Left trouble everywhere she went. Tried to spoil things between Tom here and his Mary, but Bess – Malton, she was then – saw straight through it and told Mary to go and ask Tom straight out iffen what she’d heard was true. And anyone that would try to do the dirty on your Mary, who was the kindest girl ever…”
There was quite a lot more, but I got the message. “There you are, Mary. You’re having a cuddle from your Auntie Clara. How does it feel?”
“I don’t think she can talk yet,” I pointed out.
“Idiot! I was asking you!”
“Kind of cool, actually. Are you really sure that you want me that involved in her life though?” I mean, Clara, local resident, is not the same as Auntie Clara.
“Yes, I am. We are. We want you in Mary’s life. And we trust you. We know that you will be good to her and good for her.”
Wow. That shut me up. “Now. Fill me in on the latest school stuff. What did Old Tench and Artie have to say?”
Annette had to ask me twice. I was still all amazed that they would want to trust me with their baby. Maybe Addie’s right about me. “Of course I’m right about you.” Gotta love Miss Adelaide Kirk’s certainty about things!
“I told you. I can see right through you. I can see the real Clara Hayes. And you have a chance to become her.”
Hang on, this was all getting a bit quantum, wasn’t it?
“This careful façade that you’ve created…”
What do you mean, façade? This is who I want to be!
“…isn’t really who you want to be. You need to let the real Clara out.”
This was going to be one of Addie’s painful-but-good-for-me conversations, I could tell.
“The childhood you had…”
“You learnt to read people, to manipulate them, because you couldn’t trust them to be good to you, to take care of you. You needed those skills to survive. Now adapt them. Learn how to read if people can be trusted. Learn how to manipulate people to bring out the best in them – it’s what a teacher does all the time. A good one. She looks for the best in her pupils and works out how to bring it out.” “But what happens when the other shoe drops? When someone lets you down? Betrays you?”
She’d got to the heart of my fears. Again. And I felt like I was five years old again. But there’s something about talking to the ghost of a bossy schoolteacher…you don’t have to be afraid of being honest with her.
“You will have to beware of resonant frequencies. You know – how you can sing a note and shatter a wineglass? People will let you down. Because they are human. And a little letdown will make all your big past betrayals hum in sympathy. You have to be smart enough to say: this little let down is not that big betrayal. This person is good. Fallible, but good. Young, but good. Old and forgetful, but good. Be – be savvy, Clara! Read people properly!” “Read people? But I’ve been doing that all my life…”
“Yes. But lose some of the cynicism.”
“So – read people for the good in them?”
“Read the good in them. Thomas Tench – you won’t find much bad in him, even if he was no scholar. And Arthur Campbell too – though he was a better scholar and had a knack for writing. Thomas’s Mary was the loveliest and the kindest girl I ever taught, and she chose Thomas. She could have had almost any of the young men, but she chose him, which tells you a lot about him.”
If a ghost could get all misty-eyed and nostalgic, I swear Miss Kirk was doing just that.
“What about Maddie Portland?” I asked. I swear the temperature dropped twenty degrees.
“Madeleine Portland was an untruthful, lazy, mischief-making spoilt little girl with an eye to the main chance. I caught her cheating more than once. And she used her influence and prettiness to the detriment of others.”
Well, that answered that question! And left me thinking, too. I wouldn’t want someone saying I used my influence to the detriment of others. And I know I can influence people. It’s how I’ve survived for so long. It’s my super-power.
But maybe I need to use it for more than just my own good. I kind of like the idea of seeing the best in little Mary and bringing it out in her. And in Patience’s three – especially Barnabas! And Marianna’s children too. Check this out! This is the school corridor. Looks good, doesn’t it? Check out the absence of Barnabas-sized holes as well. Most of the classrooms behind these doors are – shall we say, less than ideal? But two of them look great. This one’s going to be for the kindergarten. I think the little mice and rabbits are kind of cute. Patience’s three, basically, and then Mary and Patience’s next ones in a couple of years or so. And this room’s for Marianna’s four. There will be some furniture too! And those stepladders are going back to my house, because that’s where I’m painting, decorating, cleaning and gardening next. Addie approves of me having my own address. Partly because it means I can register to do exams. And I suppose she has a point. Though so far, I’ve done fine without them, I said, and she did agree. I’m going to finish painting that old dolls’ house today for the kindergarten room. Minnie’s going to shake down all three of her daughters and see if anything falls out of their toyboxes that they don’t need. Old Tench has promised a couple of bookcases, one for each room, and Artie’s giving some books and so’s Amber and Lucie. Everyone’s giving something. Patience is going to teach to start with. And later we have a teacher coming! Artie tracked down the Enstein son – the one who owns the old school house – to see if willing to sell it to us, but it turns out he’s going to move back here. He’s an electrician, and he reckons he can find enough work in Newborough. But his girlfriend’s a teacher! Can’t find a teaching job where they’re living, so she’s getting no experience, which makes it harder to get a job…this might break that cycle for her.
They know we can only pay peanuts – well, plus fresh fruit, veg and fish and a bottle of quite-decent-by-now wine every so often. But they’re fine with that, apparently.
“We’ll give it a go,” they said. “If it doesn’t work out, we haven’t lost anything.”
But I’m hoping it does work out. I like the idea of the school being used again. Eight children now, and at least one more on the way. Maybe I should repaint this hopscotch grid.
Old Tench is right. This place is coming back to life.

If you want to try Clara for yourself, she's an AlphaFen creation, and can be found here:
Not Quite A Runaway Success
A renovacy made for MamaDragon by AlphaFen as part of the Amayzing Gift Exchange
https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=9310815
Back story here: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/17074021/#Comment_17074021