04 Village Teacher (2 page)

‘ ’Ullo, Mr Sheffield. Can we chuck sticks up t’get conkers, please?’ asked Heathcliffe.

‘I’m afraid not, Heathcliffe,’ I said, with safety in mind, although I recalled that, as a boy, I had collected conkers in the same way. ‘But I can reach the low branches, so we’ll get some at morning playtime.’

‘Thanks, Mr Sheffield,’ said Heathcliffe. ‘M’dad said ’e’d put some in t’oven tonight t’mek ’em ’ard.’ Heathcliffe took his conkers very seriously.

Meanwhile, Terry looked up in admiration. In his eyes, Heathcliffe was Luke Skywalker and the Bionic Man all rolled into one.

I leant on the wrought-iron gate and looked across the village green. Morning sunshine lit up the white-fronted public house, The Royal Oak, which nestled comfortably in the centre of a row of cottages with pantile roofs and tall, sturdy brick chimneys. Outside, under the welcome shade of a weeping-willow tree, Old Tommy Piercy was sitting on the bench next to the duck pond, contentedly smoking a pipe of Old Holborn tobacco. He was watching the High Street coming alive. The village postman, Ted Postlethwaite, had just finished delivering mail to the General Stores & Newsagent, Piercy’s Butcher’s Shop,
the
Village Pharmacy, Pratt’s Hardware Emporium, Nora’s Coffee Shop and Diane’s Hair Salon. Then he disappeared into the Post Office to enjoy his usual cup of tea with Miss Duff, the postmistress.

Off to my right, children were turning the corner of School View from the council estate and running towards school. Among them was eight-year-old Jimmy Poole. He was growing tall now but the mop of ginger curly hair, black-button eyes and freckled face were just as I remembered them.

‘Good morning, Jimmy,’ I said.

He stopped and looked up at me. ‘Hello, Mithter Theffield,’ he lisped. He pointed to the group of new starters standing with their mothers against the school wall. ‘My thithter, Jemima, thtarth thchool today, Mr Theffield,’ he panted.

Mrs Poole was clutching the tiny hand of four-year-old Jemima, whose long wavy ginger hair was neatly brushed and tied back with a blue ribbon.

‘Well, I’m sure you’ll look after her, Jimmy,’ I said.

‘Yeth, Mr Theffield,’ shouted Jimmy as he ran off to discuss the forthcoming conker season with his friend Heathcliffe.

I looked back at the school and felt a pang of sadness. It was a solid Victorian building of reddish-brown bricks, high-arched windows, a steeply sloping grey slate roof and a tall, incongruous bell tower. Each year, for over one hundred years, the bell had rung to announce a new school year. In a huddle, by the stone steps of the entrance porch, stood seven mothers, each clutching the hand of a four-year-old new starter destined for
Anne
Grainger’s reception class. They were the new generation of Ragley children and, as I hurried back into school, I prayed they wouldn’t be the last.

I wondered what the new academic year held in store.

For this was 1980. Over two million were unemployed, inflation had risen to more than twenty per cent and Margaret Thatcher was becoming increasingly annoyed by the antics of a certain Arthur Scargill. Stone-washed jeans were suddenly fashionable and Action Man had been voted Toy of the Decade. Intelligence was measured by the speed with which you could complete a Rubik cube and Phillips had released something called a compact-disc player. Meanwhile, an unknown group of children known as the St Winifred’s School Choir were practising a song about their grandma.

When I opened the staff-room door, Vera was distributing a set of pristine school registers. Our tall, slim, elegant fifty-eight-year-old school secretary looked immaculate in her navy-blue pin-striped Marks & Spencer’s business suit. ‘Good morning, Mr Sheffield,’ she said, ‘and congratulations!’ She gave me a knowing smile and handed over a beautiful Engagement card. It had been signed by all the staff.

‘Jack, we’re all so happy for you,’ said Anne Grainger.

‘Well done, Jack,’ said Sally Pringle. She leant forward, gave me a peck on my cheek and glanced down at my new shoes, ‘and I like the groovy footwear.’

Sally, a tall, ginger-haired thirty-nine-year-old who taught Class 3, the eight- and nine-year-olds, was wearing her usual loud colours. A voluminous bright-pink blouse
hung
loosely over her pillar-box red stretch cords. While the blouse clashed with her Pre-Raphaelite red hair, it comfortably hid her precious bulge. Sally was eighteen weeks pregnant and due to leave at Christmas, to be replaced by Miss Flint, our supply teacher.

She grinned wickedly and patted her tummy. ‘And before long, Jack, it might be your turn to have a little one.’

‘Oh no!’ I exclaimed hurriedly. ‘I don’t think so … We’ve not even fixed a date for the wedding yet.’

‘So when do you think it might be?’ asked Jo Hunter. The diminutive twenty-five-year-old taught the seven-and eight-year-olds in Class 2. Jo was married to Dan Hunter, our friendly six-foot-four-inch local policeman, and was always full of energy. She was dressed in her new body-hugging tracksuit and Chris Evert trainers, with her long black hair tied back in a pony-tail.

‘We’re in no rush,’ I said cautiously. ‘It will probably be next year sometime.’

‘Very wise, Mr Sheffield,’ said Vera, peering at me over her steel-framed spectacles.

I smiled. Vera always insisted on calling me ‘Mr Sheffield’. Only once had she ever called me by my first name and that was at the end of last term during a conversation that had changed my life. Vera had insisted I should tell Beth my true feelings. ‘Go and find her, Jack. Don’t let her go,’ Vera had said. ‘That happened to me once. I wouldn’t want you to let it happen to Beth.’

I didn’t ask Vera what she really meant and supposed I never would.

‘Well, good luck, everybody. I’ll go and ring the bell.’

So, on the stroke of nine o’clock, amid tearful farewells among the mothers of the new starters, the children of Ragley village wandered happily into school to begin the academic year 1980/81.

In my classroom, twenty-three ten- and eleven-year-olds were sitting at their hexagonal Formica-topped tables. In front of each child was a reading record card, a new wooden ruler, an HB pencil, a tin of Lakeland crayons, a rubber, a
New Oxford Dictionary
and a collection of new exercise books with different-coloured manila covers.

Predictably, I started off with something simple and we talked about what we had done during the school holiday. Soon all the class were writing and I was pleased to see ten-year-old Tracy Crabtree using her dictionary. Unknown to me, she was searching for the word ‘steroids’. Twenty minutes later she placed her book on the pile on my desk for marking and moved on to some long multiplication. I picked up my red pen and read what Tracy had written:

‘My dad bought some steroids in the holidays. My mam said he had to get them because she was fed up of him. She said he’d been putting it off for ages. So he got his hammer and fixed them to the stair carpet to stop it slipping.’

I underlined the word ‘steroids’, wrote ‘stair rods’ in the margin and ‘Well done’ at the bottom. Once again I reflected that teaching had its moments … particularly when I marked eleven-year-old Cathy Cathcart’s book. Cathy had written, ‘My gran was really poorly in the holidays. My mam said it was a terminal illness.’

I called Cathy out to my desk. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother,’ I said quietly.

‘Oh, that’s all right, Mr Sheffield, she’s better now,’ said Cathy cheerfully.

‘But you wrote she had a terminal illness,’ I said, pointing to the sentence.

‘That’s reight, Mr Sheffield. She were sick at ’Eathrow Airport.’

Shortly before morning assembly we had a discussion about the responsibilities of being in the ‘top’ class and I asked for volunteers for some of the responsible jobs we had to do each day. Two eleven-year-olds with sound financial sense, Simon Nelson and Carol Bustard, were put in charge of the tuck shop. Katy Ollerenshaw inevitably became blackboard-cleaning monitor. This job traditionally went to Ragley’s tallest pupil and Katy had always been in the middle of the back row on class photographs. Cathy Cathcart, a fastidious timekeeper, became school-bell monitor and Darrell Topper became the ‘letting teachers know that school assembly will start in five minutes’ monitor as he was the fastest boy in school and for some strange reason was desperate for the job.

At morning break I collected a hot milky coffee and went out to do playground duty. It was a pleasure on such a lovely day and, as promised, I helped Heathcliffe and his friends collect a large pile of conkers. Soon, however, he was trying to teach the girls in his class how to wink and whistle. He was intensely proud that he could do both simultaneously.

* * *

After lunch we gathered in the staff-room. Vera was checking late dinner money and Anne and Jo were quizzing Sally about the trials of pregnancy.

I had spent twenty pence on my copy of
The Times
and scanned the news. Len Murray, the TUC General Secretary, wanted urgent talks with Jim Callaghan about incomes policy. Meanwhile, the BBC’s recorded highlights of a Football League Cup match between Ipswich and Middlesbrough had not been screened last night because the Middlesbrough team had advertising on their shirts. The bright labels showing Middlesbrough’s affiliation to Datsun Japanese cars was in contravention of the corporation’s rules. Advertising was suddenly becoming big business in football and I wondered where it would end.

During afternoon school we had just begun our new project on the history of York when there was a tap on my door and Shirley the cook popped her head round the door. She looked anxious. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, Mr Sheffield, but can I have a word?’

I walked out into the corridor. Shirley Mapplebeck was a wonderful school cook and with her assistant, the formidable Mrs Doreen Critchley, worked wonders in her small kitchen. ‘What is it, Shirley?’ I asked.

‘We’ve got a blockage, Mr Sheffield,’ said Shirley, ‘an ’ah can’t get anything t’flush away.’

‘Shall I have a look at playtime, Shirley?’

‘Doreen ’ad a go before she left, Mr Sheffield. If she can’t shift it, no one can.’

I nodded in agreement. Doreen Critchley had the forearms of a circus strong man. ‘You’d better ask Miss Evans to ring County Hall, Shirley.’

By afternoon break, Vera had everything in hand in her usual unflappable style. ‘Battersbys will be in first thing tomorrow, Mr Sheffield.’

‘Battersbys?’

‘Yes, Mr Sheffield, the Battersby brothers. They can unblock anything,’ said Vera, with absolute certainty.

‘Thanks, Vera,’ I said. ‘What would I do without you?’

She smiled and returned to typing a note to parents entitled ‘School Photographs – Reminder’ on her Royal Imperial typewriter.

It was after six o’clock when I climbed into my emerald-green Morris Minor Traveller and drove the three miles home to Bilbo Cottage in the sleepy village of Kirkby Steepleton.

I sat down in the lounge and began to write a report to the school governors about our new school library extension – now close to completion – while attempting to grill a pork chop. I was soon engrossed and only the smell of burning from the kitchen reminded me of my inability to multi-task. By 8.30 p.m. I needed a break so I switched on BBC 1 and settled down to watch
Yes Minister
. The brilliant Nigel Hawthorne was leading poor Paul Eddington his usual merry dance when the telephone rang.

‘Had a good day?’ asked a familiar voice. It was Beth.

‘I wish you were here,’ I said.

‘Why?’ said Beth. I imagined her green eyes twinkling with a hint of mischief.

‘I’ve just cremated my evening meal.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Can you come round?’ I asked hopefully. There was a pause and I knew she would be twirling a lock of honey-blonde hair between her fingers while she considered my proposal.

‘Sorry, Jack – too much paperwork. Anyway, we can catch up at the weekend. I’ve got something interesting to show you.’

‘Can’t wait,’ I said.

We said our usual goodbyes and, with the television for company, it was nearly midnight by the time I finished my report. Patrick Moore in
The Sky at Night
was wandering around a meteor crater in northern Arizona and looking as lonely as I felt when I switched off. Finally, in my quiet bedroom, I dispelled thoughts of blocked sinks and fell asleep wondering what life would be like when Beth was here.

The next morning bright autumn sunshine lit up the back road to Ragley village. At this time of year, my journey to school was always a joy in this beautiful corner of God’s Own Country. Beyond the hawthorn hedgerow a field of corn swayed with the rhythm of the soft breeze and the breath of life. However, my peace was soon shattered when I drove up the cobbled school drive and heard the sound of hammering and loud voices.

In the car park was a filthy battleship-grey van covered in rust. A crude sign in white gloss had been painted on
the
back doors. It read:
Albert & Sidney Battersby – Blockages are our Business
.

The noise was coming from the other side of the cycle shed where two stocky unshaven men, dressed in filthy brown overalls, had removed a huge metal inspection cover. One of the pair was bald as a coot and peering down the hole. He was beating our Victorian drainage system with a club hammer and appeared completely unconcerned that he was up to his elbows in raw sewage. The other, sporting the thickest National Health spectacles I had ever seen and clearly the brains of the partnership, was issuing instructions.

‘Good morning,’ I shouted. ‘I’m the headteacher, Jack Sheffield.’

‘ ’Morning, Mr Sheffield,’ said the one with the spectacles. He peered at me myopically. ‘Ah’m Bert an’ this is m’brother, Sid.’ Both of them were unmoved by the putrid smell.

‘So, can you fix it?’ I asked and wrinkled my nose.

Bert sucked air through his teeth and looked down at Sid. ‘We’ve seen some blockages in us time, ’aven’t we, Sid?’ he said. Then he shook his head sadly as if someone had just died. ‘ ’Ow’s it looking?’

‘It’s nine-inch solid down ’ere,’ said Sid.