01 Teacher, Teacher!

by Jack Sheffield

  I crouched down alongside him.

  “Hello, Mr Hardisty. I’m sorry to trouble you but we had some official visitors at school today. They told me about a new scheme they’re going to introduce for looking after the school grounds.”

  He sighed deeply and brushed a few crumbs of soil in an absent-minded way from the smooth skin of the onion by his side.

  “Ah know,” he said quietly and then stared back at the ground.

  I looked around me, seeking inspiration.

  “You have a marvellous garden, Mr Hardisty. Everything’s growing so well.”

  He suddenly stood up straight and beckoned me to follow him.

  “C’mon, Mr Sheffield, ah’ll show y’summat special.”

  We walked at a brisk pace around the back of some old, redbrick outbuildings and creosoted sheds and George led me through a sturdy wooden gate. He glanced over his shoulder with an impish grin as I struggled to keep up with him.

  “We shan’t be ower long,” he said. “It’s nowt but a spit ‘n’ a stride away.”

  We followed a mazy, well-worn path to the furthest corner of his bountiful garden until we reached an area totally surrounded by high, chain-linked fencing. Some strange-looking mounds of rich, dark earth stood in line, each surmounted by a large, cylindrical, red tile chimney pot, like a row of wartime air-raid shelters.

  He explained at length how he carefully selected the correct carrot seed and planted them inside chimney pots to make sure they grew long and straight. Each day he fed them his own secret mixture of liquid compost stirred in an old metal bucket to a recipe perfected over many years.

  He opened the gate and we stepped inside. I felt strangely privileged to be there. This was his secret garden and time seemed to stand still. He knelt down and scooped up a handful of the rich, black, peaty soil and then let the fine tilth crumble through his rough fingers.

  “Perfect,” he mumbled to himself.

  He offered me a handful of the soil and gently sieved it into my cupped hands. It fell like the precious sands of time and he sighed with reverent admiration.

  “It teks years t’get it like that, tha knows,” he said proudly.

  “It looks beautiful, Mr Hardisty.”

  “Tis that,” he replied. “Tha finds beauty in strange places.”

  It seemed a most profound statement for such a straightforward and honest man. His depth of feeling for this mere handful of earth strangely moved me.

  But it was his earth.

  It was his creation following many hours of honest toil by a man who had grown old in the bosom of nature and measured time in the changing of seasons.

  With extreme care he deftly extracted a giant carrot from one of the chimney pots. It was huge, perfectly shaped and looked about two feet long.

  “Tek it,” he said. “A present for you.”

  He passed it to me like a newborn baby and I cradled it in wonderment.

  “Oh, thank you very much, Mr Hardisty, but I wonder…could I put it in the Harvest Festival on Friday? It could take pride of place among the produce.”

  “Aye, if y’like,” he said and nodded.

  I weighed the massive carrot in my hands.

  “What is the secret, Mr Hardisty? Just how do you grow them so big?”

  He smiled a knowing smile and tapped his nose with a gnarled and blackened forefinger. “Tis the secret ingredient.”

  A sudden creaking of the gate caused us to turn round. There stood Mrs Hardisty rubbing her damp, work-red hands on the hem of her faded flower-print apron.

  “So that’s where you’ve been hiding!” she shouted. “Well, ah’ll go t’foot of our stairs! An’ what y’doing dragging young Mr Sheffield down ‘ere t’look at y’blessed carrots? Come on, both of ye. Ah’ve got a nice pot of tea brewing in t’kitchen.”

  I was soon sitting in a battered but comfy chair drinking tea from a large china cup with a matching willow-patterned saucer. Mrs Hardisty was at my elbow again with more apple pie and a refill from a huge brown teapot.

  “An’ how’s all the little bairns at school, Mr Sheffield? They looked real bonny last time ah saw ‘em doing that Maypole dancing last summer.”

  “Fine, thank you,” I replied. “The youngest ones have settled in well.”

  Mrs Hardisty sat down on a wooden-framed wicker-work chair and leaned on the old pine table. She traced her finger down the rose pattern on the white tablecloth.

  “We never ‘ad no children, did we, George?”

  Mr Hardisty stared into his milky tea.

  “But we ‘ad ‘undred of babies, didn’t we, love? All them little lambs.”

  She was caught up in the spell of reflected memories and her eyes were shining.

  “D’you know, Mr Sheffield, he’d doze off in a chair at lambing time? He never went t’bed. He were sharp as a sixpence an’ bright as a button. An’ all the weak little lambs he’d bring inside in front of the fire. But ah still kept that farmhouse spick ‘n’ span. An’ he’d come in at night an’ say, what’s f’tea, our lass? He allus said that. Day in an’ day out it were allus the same. An’ ah’d say same every night, dry bread an’ pull it! I allus said that. An’ ‘e would laugh. We used t’laugh a lot in them days.”

  She drifted into a silence of private recollections and all was quiet apart from the ticking of the old wall clock and the contented mewing of a tabby cat.

  Mr Hardisty looked up at me and felt in the pocket of his rough, old jacket. He pulled out a creased, brown envelope and passed it to me.

  “An’ now they want t’get rid of me,” he said softly. “Ah’m too old. I ‘ave t’retire they say. I love that job at school an’ now ah’ve got t’go.”

  I read the letter that confirmed the termination of Mr Hardisty’s contract.

  “I’m very sorry, Mr Hardisty. Everyone will be sorry to see you go. I just wish there was something I could do.”

  George Hardisty shook his head.

  “Nay, Mr Sheffield. It’s ower for us. There’s nowt y’can do. Any road, ah’ve enjoyed m’time there an’ ah do know you’ll mek a good un.”

  His eyes looked damp and his wife put her hand on his arm.

  “Come on, luv,” she said. “Cheer up, worse things ‘appen at sea.”

  Soon my cup was refilled and we sank deep into a conversation that ebbed and flowed like a cleansing tide. For over an hour I forgot the busy pressures of professional life and rediscovered the joy of swapping stories.

  Mary Hardisty proved to be a fund of tales and legends about the moors. She told the story of a fantastic mythical giant who dug a huge hole with his bare hands and piled the soil into a rounded hilltop that earned the delightful name of Blakey Topping. She then gave a passable imitation of the fierce giant and made violent digging motions with her large, pink hands. Apparently, the hole resembled a natural amphitheatre and became known as the Hole of Horcum.

  “But we called it the Devil’s Punchbowl,” she explained, “an’ that frightened me when ah were little.” Her eyes were wide with the memory. “My mother used t’say that if ah looked in t’mirror a thousand times ah would see t’devil hisself.”

  I began to see where many of Mary Hardisty’s sayings originated. An old framed photograph on the mantelpiece caught my eye. Mary Hardisty picked it up and pointed to the young couple holding hands and looking very much in love.

  “That teks me back, Mr Sheffield,” she said. “That’s me an’ George when we were courting. We’re outside Thompson’s barn up in t’dales. It were t’Christmas dance.”

  She thrust the photo in George’s lap.

  “D’you remember, George? You an’ Nathan Barraclough would get two long iron bars an’ lift that coke stove out into t’snow an’ we women would shake Lux soapflakes all over t’floorboards. Mind you, it made ‘em all sneeze but y’could waltz all night like a skater.”

  Eventually I took my leave with the enormous carrot and a Yorkshire pudding recipe for Mrs Mapplebeck, the school cook.
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  Two days later it seemed as if the whole village had crowded into school for the Harvest Festival. The hall floor creaked under the massive weight of trestle tables loaded with garden produce, tinned food and home-baked, plaited bread. Sheaves of barley were propped roughly alongside. The centrepiece, however, was the formidable carrot, standing proudly like an Olympic torch.

  The vicar, the Revd Joseph Evans, led the service of thanksgiving. He announced to the congregation that ‘all of God’s bounty would be distributed in and around the village to the poor and needy’. This clearly upset Ruby’s mother, Agnes, who was always happy to accept her annual hamper. She didn’t mind being thought of as ‘needy’ but she certainly objected to being called ‘poor’ and she made up her mind to tell Joe Evans so in no uncertain terms. She still remembered the antics of the teenage Joseph between the wars when she rode on the crossbar of his grocery boy’s bicycle. Her eyes twinkled with secret reminiscences as with a communal ‘Amen’ eighty children and over a hundred parents and grandparents ended the final prayer.

  Slowly the crowds thinned but not before many had paused to stare in wonderment at the giant carrot. I persuaded Mr Hardisty to pose, reluctantly, for a photograph with a throng of willing children alongside the produce. Moments later, a familiar mud-splattered Ford Capri speeded carelessly up the cobbled driveway and Simon Elliott strode confidently towards me into the centre of the school hall.

  “Sorry to trouble you, Mr Sheffield,” he said, but his eyes remained glassy and insincere. “Here’s the completed maintenance schedule for your school.”

  He thrust a red plastic packet in my hand. Inside I could see a spiral-bound, photocopied booklet entitled ‘Grounds Maintenance Schedule’. I glanced up at Mr Hardisty who looked slightly out of character in his baggy, ageing, grey suit.

  “Mr Elliott,” I said, “let me introduce our school groundsman, Mr Hardisty.”

  George Hardisty’s blue eyes never faltered as he shook the soft hand nervously proffered by the pinstriped visitor.

  “Ow do?” said George, simply.

  “How do you do?” said Mr Elliott, carefully avoiding eye contact.

  Mr Elliott’s gaze swept along the Harvest Festival display. His eyes widened on seeing the carrot.

  “Gosh, what a monster,” he exclaimed.

  “Mr Hardisty grows them,” I explained.

  “But surely no one will buy them at this size,” said Mr Elliott, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “They’re not f’sale,” said Mr Hardisty quietly.

  “But how do you grow them so big?” asked Mr Elliott.

  Mr Hardisty smiled. “Tis the secret ingredient,” he said.

  “And what’s that? What is the secret ingredient?” asked Mr Elliott.

  Mr Hardisty’s blue eyes looked misty. There was a silence as he sought the right words.

  “Ah’ll tell you what it is, young man,” he said. “Fifty years’ experience.” He glanced down at the neatly bound plastic-coated folder under my arm. “Fifty years’ experience and y’can’t buy that in plastic packets.”

  Mr Elliott was dumbstruck.

  Mrs Hardisty tugged at her husband’s sleeve.

  “C’mon, George, time t’go,” she said.

  I bade the flushed Mr Elliott a curt goodbye and walked down the school drive with Mr and Mrs Hardisty. We stepped onto the grass verge to allow Mr Elliott to drive past. His rear wheel bumped over the corner of one of the flowerbeds as he cut the corner by the school gates.

  “There goes the future,” said Mr Hardisty.

  I nodded in silent agreement.

  Mr Hardisty’s fears soon became a reality. In the next few years many of the flowerbeds were grassed over to allow the giant gang mower to lop the top few inches off the lank grass. Hedges became bedraggled and sprays killed off the wild flowers. The school grounds were never the same again.

  Each year at the Ragley and Morton Agricultural Show I saw Mr and Mrs Hardisty. Mrs Hardisty continued to win the home baking competitions but Mr Hardisty never won another trophy for his vegetables. An emergency meeting of the show committee made an important and unprecedented decision. After winning the Best Vegetables Trophy for three consecutive years it was decided to let Mr Hardisty keep the trophy. He was also made the judge for all future competitions and this meant that he was happy and all the local gardeners breathed a sigh of relief.

  The only loser was the school. We missed George Hardisty, his green fingers, his humility and his love of nature. We also never discovered his ‘secret ingredient’. Perhaps it was just as well.

  That way he always remained the carrot champion.

  Five

  The Best Dressed Guy Fawkes

  Mrs Smith, Caretaker, reported vandalism to the school driveway and windows. This will be discussed at the next Governors’ Meeting.

  Miss Barrington-Huntley, Chief Education Officer, and Miss Henderson, Temporary Adviser, visited school for a full day inspection.

  The school bonfire, organized by the PTA, was a success and raised £142.60.

  Extract from the Ragley School Logbook: Friday 4 November 1977

  “A

  -Rhesus negative,” said Staff Nurse Phillips, checking my Blood Donor’s card. “That’s quite rare, Jack.”

  I stared into her mischievous blue eyes and tried with all my might not to flinch as she inserted the needle into my arm.

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I asked.

  Sue Phillips was the mother of Claire Phillips in my class and had a wicked sense of humour. After my mix-up at the Parents Evening, Sue had visited school on a number of occasions. As well as being the School Nurse and working part time at York Hospital, she was also an active member of the Ragley Parent Teacher Association and we had progressed to first-name terms in off-duty moments.

  I turned sideways on the narrow bed in the mobile caravan and stared out of the window at Ragley High Street. It was only 7.45 a.m. and I was the first customer offering to give blood before I continued on my journey to school. The village was waking up and Deke Ramsbottom rumbled by on a tractor to collect timber from one of Stan Coe’s old sheds for the annual village bonfire.

  “Well done, Jack. You’ve earned a cup of tea and a biscuit.”

  I glanced up at the smiling Sue. She pressed a gauze swab onto my arm and then restrained me as I attempted to get up.

  “Take your time, Jack. You’ll feel giddy for a short while. Stay on the bed for a minute or two.”

  She came back with a cup of sweet tea and a digestive biscuit.

  “Drink this and then you can get off to school. By the way, I’m on the PTA soup and hot dog stall tonight, so I’ll see you later.” Sue hurried off to check on her next customer. I drank the tea, stood up a little shakily, picked up my briefcase from the floor, grabbed my jacket from the bed and left.

  It was Friday 4 November and a busy day was in store. Not only did we have to prepare for the annual village bonfire but we also had the infamous Miss Barrington-Huntley, Chair of the Education Department from County Hall, inspecting the school. She was due to arrive at 9.00 a.m., accompanied by Beth Henderson, one of the newly appointed local advisory teachers, who had sounded friendly on the telephone. When I told her I was a little concerned, she had reassured me that Miss Barrington-Huntley’s bark was worse than her bite.

  As I approached the school gate, a frantic Ruby was waving at me.

  “Them little terrors!” she shouted. “This always ‘appens just before Bonfire Night an’ look what they’ve done!”

  Whilst most of the village children indulged in harmless fun and wheeled their guys from door to door and begged a few pennies, some of the local teenagers used the cover of darkness to damage property.

  “It ‘appens every year,” complained Ruby. “They’ve thrown eggs at the windows and we’ve got broken glass on the school driveway.”

  The rest of the staff had not yet arrived so I made a quick decision.
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br />   “You do the windows, Ruby, and I’ll see to the drive.”

  I rushed into school, dropped my old brown leather briefcase in the office, hung up my tweed jacket on the hook behind the door and dragged on my paint-splattered blue boiler suit that I kept for messy jobs such as mixing wallpaper paste for artwork. Pausing only to grab a broom and shovel, I hurried back down the drive. I had just finished putting the last of the broken glass into a large black bucket when a pale blue Volkswagen Beetle pulled into the school driveway. It stopped a short distance away and the driver popped her head out of the window and gave me an enchanting smile.

  “Excuse me. Where do we park please?”

  The question was simple but I was rooted to the spot. Next to her in the passenger seat was a large lady in a black coat with a fur-trimmed collar and a striking silver-grey hat adorned with a peacock feather. With a face like thunder she stared at my shabby appearance as if I was a tramp begging for money.

  “Hurry up. It’s cold. Tell him we’re here to see the headmaster,” boomed Miss Barrington-Huntley.

  I pointed hesitantly towards the car park at the rear of the school.

  The driver flashed me a grin and drove off.

  With a burst of speed that surprised Ruby, I rushed through the side entrance of the school, ran into the office, ripped off the boiler suit, flung it under my desk and put on my jacket. Then I left the office door wide open, sat down behind my desk, straightened my tie and grabbed a County Hall circular from the wire tray. I was searching for my fountain pen in my jacket pocket when footsteps approached. Miss Barrington-Huntley had arrived in the entrance hall and was muttering something about how difficult it was to get a decent caretaker these days.

  A slim, attractive woman about five feet six inches tall with long, honey-blond hair and a face that shone with health walked confidently into the office. She glanced down at the boiler suit and smiled.

  “Good morning,” I said nervously, “welcome to Ragley.”

  “Hello again, Mr Sheffield,” she said.

  The first time we had met was two minutes earlier on the school driveway and my change of costume had not gone unnoticed. She raised her eyebrows as we shook hands. Her handshake was firm.