‘Good sort of car to drive in this sort o’ weather, I reckon,’ observed the other boy. ‘It’s like a tank. Cooarse, tha needs a bit o’weight under thee, to get up Barton Hill.’
‘You certainly do.’
‘Keeps thee on t’rooad, then?’
‘Yes, it does. Well, I must be getting on. See you in school.’
The headteacher of Barton Moor Parochial was a large, rosy-cheeked, good-natured woman by the name of Miss Sally Precious. When I had first inspected the school, it had received a good report but there had been one or two criticisms and suggestions. I had had a meeting with Miss Precious the year before but it had been in the Staff Devlopment Centre when she had been there for a course; the purpose of this visit was to see how much progress had been made in the school.
‘Bit different from your last visit, eh, Mr Phinn?’ she said, bustling towards me and then shaking my hand vigorously. ‘My goodness, the snow was thick and then the fog descended. It’s a wonder you got back home in one piece.’
‘Yes, indeed, Miss Precious,’ I replied. ‘I won’t forget that journey in a long time.’
She chatted on amiably as I followed her in the direction of her small office.
‘I’ve put you with Mrs Durdon and the infants first and then you’re with me after morning playtime. Is that all right?’
‘Fine,’ I replied.
‘Then at lunchtime we can have a little chat about how things have improved since you were last here. Well,’ and she gave a little laugh, ‘I certainly think that things have improved.’
‘I’m so glad to hear it,’ I said, trying to keep up.
‘Do you remember when you last came we had that interesting conversation about Joseph, the gifted pupil?’
‘Yes, I was going to ask you about him,’ I said, hoping to hear more about the intriguing boy I had met on the previous visit.
‘Well, I’ll tell you all about him later,’ she told me, striding ahead. ‘I’m sure you want to make a start.’
Joseph had been the very first pupil to whom I had spoken when I had last called at Barton Moor. He could have been a schoolboy of the 1950s. He had a short-back-and-sides haircut and was dressed in long grey trousers and a hand-knitted grey jersey, while his shoes were eminently sensible. He wore extremely thick-lensed spectacles. Joseph was probably the brightest pupil I had ever met, with a sharp enquiring mind, a remarkable general knowledge and an outstanding command of English, but he seemed such a sad, serious, lonely child. I had often thought about how he would fare moving from the small and friendly rural primary school to the large comprehensive in West Challerton. It occurred to me that he would be the perfect target for the school bullies.
Yes, I was looking forward to hearing from Miss Precious just how Joseph was getting along at his new school where he had been for nearly a year now.
There were just the two classrooms in Barton Moor School, one for the infants and one for the juniors. Both were long rooms with high, beamed ceilings and both were clean and orderly. A large picture window had been put in the junior classroom (how Miss Precious managed to get planning permission, I will never know) and this gave the children an uninterrupted and quite magnificent view across the moor and down into the valley. The infant classroom, with its small, high windows, was darker and less cheerful and it was the headteacher’s principal aim in life to have a similar ‘window on the world’ created there, too.
When I came into the infants’ classroom, Mrs Durdon, who was a small, intense-looking woman, seemed extremely nervous and blinked rapidly. ‘I’m afraid you’ve come at the wrong time,’ she told me rather crossly. She sounded like an irritated housewife, confronted with a fervent member of some religious sect intent on converting her.
‘The wrong time?’ I repeated.
‘We’re doing mathematics this morning, not English. English takes place this afternoon. Can you come back?’
‘No, not really,’ I replied. ‘I’m only here for the morning.’
The teacher blinked madly. ‘After your last visit, Mr Phinn, you suggested that we planned our days more thoroughly and devoted greater time to the basic subjects, so we now have maths in the morning and English in the afternoon. I did tell Miss Precious.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said calmly, ‘I’ll just stay for ten minutes.’
‘But we are doing maths this morning,’ she repeated, ‘not English.’
‘Yes, you said. I’ll just stay for a moment, if I may.’
The children had been set the exercise of identifying different geometrical shapes – squares, rectangles, circles, triangles, hexagons and so on – which had been drawn on a worksheet. I approached a small girl busily writing away with a large pencil. She had completed the first two questions correctly: ‘Is this a triangle or a circle?’ and ‘Is this a square or a rectangle?’ but in answer to the third question she had written what looked like ‘Melanie’.
‘What is this word?’ I asked, intrigued.
‘Melanie,’ replied the child.
‘Melanie,’ I repeated. ‘Why have you written “Melanie”?’
‘Well, it says, “Name this shape”,’ she replied sweetly, ‘so I thought I’d call it Melanie.’
My laughter brought the teacher bustling to my side. I explained the reason for my amusement, before leaning over the child. ‘You know,’ I told her seriously, ‘I think it’s more of a Samantha.’
‘Actually, it’s an octagon,’ said Mrs Durdon, without any trace of a smile.
The next child, a mousy-haired girl, as small as a sparrow, with tiny bright eyes and a little beak of a nose, had completed her worksheet and was reading quietly.
‘All finished?’ I observed.
‘Yes, it was pretty straightforward,’ she told me, looking up from her book. ‘I’m pretty good at shapes.’
‘And what is your name?’ I asked.
‘Anna Martram,’ she replied.
‘Can you spell that for me?’
‘Of course I can,’ she said pertly before doing so, slowly and deliberately as if she were in the presence of a slow learner. Then she added, ‘Both my names are palindromes, you know.’
‘Palindromes?’
‘Spelt the same backwards.’ She returned to her book.
Here is another Joseph, I thought to myself.
‘The last time I came to your school,’ I told her, ‘it was very cold and wintry and on my way back I got lost, it was that dark and foggy.’
‘Yes,’ she replied without looking up, ‘visibility isn’t too good up here, is it? And now, if you will excuse me, I do so want to finish this chapter.’
At morning break I joined the headteacher in her small office and heard about Joseph’s progress.
‘Our Joseph is doing really well,’ Miss Precious informed me proudly. ‘He’s taken to secondary education like a duck to water. I think it is living in an isolated house on the moor top with his grandparents, well meaning though they undoubtedly are, which makes him seem so serious and so old for his age. He has no other children to play with up there, and his grandparents are rather strict and sober people. They don’t approve of television, cinema, fashionable clothes and comics, nothing of that sort, but they have certainly taken his education seriously. I don’t think they felt that I had really stretched him intellectually here, but he’s really coming on at the comprehensive, socially as well as intellectually. He looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders some days when he was with me. Do you know, he got this scholarship to a top public school, which I thought would be ideal for such a child, but he wouldn’t go.’
‘He wouldn’t go?’
‘No, he said he didn’t believe in private education or in private healthcare and was going to the comprehensive in West Challerton like the rest of the children. Wouldn’t budge.’
‘Why did he sit the scholarship paper for the public school if he never intended going there?’ I asked.
‘He said he wanted to see how he woul
d get on. He always liked a challenge, did Joseph, and loved doing tests. He got top marks, evidently, and they were very keen to have him, I can tell you. The headmaster was on the phone here, morning, noon and night, asking me to get him to change his mind but Joseph was as stubborn as a mule.’
‘And he’s doing all right at the comprehensive?’
‘Fine, as far as I know. He’s been there less than a year and already he’s won two national writing competitions and was selected to play in the England Junior Chess Team. He’s become a member of Junior MENSA as well and has joined the drama club. And, what’s really good to hear is that he seems to have developed a sense of humour. Now then, what about that?’
‘You always said he would go far.’
‘I did, didn’t I? Well he’s certainly on the road to fame and fortune is our Joseph Barclay, and what is really nice is that he calls in and lets me know how he’s getting on. Comes in regularly for a little chat. I do like it when my former pupils keep in touch. It makes the job that bit more worthwhile, don’t you think?’
‘And you can be justifiably proud of the part you played in his success,’ I told her, and I meant it.
‘Get away with you,’ she said, colouring up. ‘Now, there’s a little girl in Mrs Durdon’s class I want your advice about. Bright as a button she is.’
‘Ah, yes,’ I said smiling. ‘Anna the palindrome.’
Just two weeks later, I happened to meet Joseph again. I had been asked by the recently-appointed headmaster of West Challerton High School, Mr Raymond Pennington-Smith, to attend the school’s annual prize-giving ceremony and speech day when the most successful students in the various academic subjects and those who had achieved highly in sport, would be presented with their awards, certificates, shields and cups. Mr Pennington-Smith was a very different character from the previous headmaster – a large, bluff, outspoken Yorkshireman called appropriately Mr Blunt. Mr Blunt was not a one for sherry receptions and speech days.
West Challerton High School was one of the first schools I had visited as a school inspector and when I had delivered my report to Mr Blunt he had bristled when he read that there had been so much as a hint of a criticism of his school. My attempts to explain that the report was, in general, a very favourable one and that he seemed to be taking the relatively few criticisms personally, were dismissed curtly. He had told me that when a school is attacked it was the headteacher who bled and then he had shared with me his uncompromising views about my chosen profession.
‘I have always been of the opinion, Mr Phinn,’ he had told me, pushing out his face like a bulldog with toothache, ‘that school inspectors are like cross-eyed javelin throwers. They hurl a lot of spears in the direction of the schools, missing the point most of the time but occasionally, and by sheer accident, they happen to hit the right target.’
I knew that while Mr Blunt remained as headmaster of West Challerton High School, an invitation to attend a sherry reception and the annual prize-giving would not be forthcoming. Yet, despite his brusque manner and poor opinion of school inspectors, I rather liked the man. He was, like many a Yorkshire person, plain-speaking, unassuming and not a one for anything fancy – unlike his successor.
I arrived at the school an hour before the proceedings and chuddered through the gates in my old estate car in the direction of the reserved parking spaces near the main entrance. I had just negotiated the narrow bend in the drive when two smartly-dressed pupils waved me to stop.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ explained one of the boys, ‘but the spaces at the front of the school are for the VIPs only. Would you mind parking your car in the main car park at the back?’ It was obvious that the young man did not number me amongst the great and the good – not that I blamed him when I saw that the cars in the reserved spaces were rather newer models and a great deal more flashy than my old ‘wardrobe on wheels’.
‘All right,’ I said.
‘You are a little early, sir,’ the boy told me. ‘Speech Day doesn’t start until seven-thirty.’ I resisted telling the young man that I was one of the VIPs in question and that I had been invited for sherry with the headmaster and governors prior to the ceremony. ‘Perhaps, rather than waiting in the car, you would like a tour of the school,’ suggested the boy.
‘That would be splendid,’ I replied. ‘I’d like that very much.’
‘Well, you park your car, sir, and I’ll meet you back here.’
When Mr Pennington-Smith had taken over as headmaster at the beginning of the year, one of his first innovations was to commission a very impressive-looking school brochure; it was full of coloured photographs, grandiose ‘mission statements’, descriptions of the various courses offered and a list of the staff with their various academic qualifications appended. I recalled Harold telling me when I started in the job that a school is only as good as the teachers and the pupils. The best advertisements for a school, he had said, are not the glossy prospectuses, promotional leaflets, flattering newspaper articles, lists of examination results and publicity materials but the students themselves. They are the ambassadors and the school is best judged by the standard of their behaviour, their enthusiasm for learning and their achievements. The young man who took me on a guided tour of the school left me with the most favourable of impressions. He was confident, courteous and good-humoured, and kept up a running commentary as we toured classrooms and workshops.
‘Have you travelled far, sir?’ he asked, as we set off at a quick pace down a long corridor.
‘I’ve just come from Castlesnelling, so not too far.’
‘And what are your interests?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Do you follow the cricket? Terrible result from Headingley, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, I follow cricket when I have the time, although there seems little point in getting excited about Test cricket at the moment.’
‘Do you play rugger?’
‘No, not any more.’
‘Or are you more of a soccer fan?’
‘I like soccer, yes.’
On my travels around schools, I am the one who generally asks the questions so this was a very pleasant change. I glanced at my watch. ‘Well, I think I had better be on my way. Thank you very much for the tour of the school. It was most interesting.’
‘Oh, you’ve plenty of time, yet,’ the boy told me. ‘You have another half hour. Is your son or daughter receiving a prize tonight?’
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I don’t have a son or daughter. I’m not a parent. I’m a school inspector and one of the invited guests.’
‘Oh crikey!’ exclaimed the boy, his hand to his mouth. ‘You are one of the VIPs. I’m really sorry. I thought you were just one of the… just an ordinary… I didn’t know…oh help!’
‘Don’t worry yourself,’ I said, smiling. ‘I’ve very much enjoyed looking around the school. What’s your name?’
‘Andrew Winner, sir. Oh, sir, you won’t tell Mr Pennington-Smith, will you, sir, about me getting you to park at the back?’ he pleaded.
I smiled mischievously. ‘No, we’ll keep that to ourselves, shall we?’
It was certainly my intention to tell Mr Pennington-Smith how very impressed I had been with my young guide and to ask him to congratulate him on his initiative, good manners and excellent inter-personal skills. At a very brisk pace, I followed the scurrying figure and was very soon delivered outside the headmaster’s room.
‘Goodbye, sir,’ said the boy and hurried away.
My heart sank when I saw who was in animated conversation with the headmaster. Although he had his back to me, the huge neck with folds which overlapped the top of his collar, the mop of black hair and the bombastic voice were unmistakable. It was Councillor George Peterson, an insufferably garrulous and self-opinionated man who, on the several times we had met, always succeeded in irritating me beyond measure.
‘Ah,’ said the headmaster, catching sight of me entering the room, ‘I think I can see Mr Phinn.’
T
he councillor swivelled round and I was confronted with the vast florid face. ‘Oh, he’s arrived, ‘as he?’ he stated loudly to anyone who happened to be listening. ‘I thowt tha’d forgotten or ‘ad summat better on.’
‘No, councillor,’ I replied, smiling sweetly. ‘I’ve been having a tour of the school.’
‘You know Councillor Peterson, then, do you, Mr Phinn?’ enquired the headmaster, with an ingratiating smile playing on his lips.
‘Aye, we’ve met,’ the councillor replied before I could respond. ‘At interviews, school plays, parents’ evenings, Education Committee and such like. We never seem to be away from each other. I thowt we might ‘ave seen you up for t’ Senior Inspector’s job, Mester Phinn, but they never called you for interviews, did they?’ He had all the tact of a sledge hammer.
‘No, they didn’t, councillor,’ I replied.
‘I thowt to myself when I heard abaat it, you were a bit on t’premature side applying for such a top job. I mean you’ve only been in t’county five minutes.’
Why don’t you say it a little louder so all the room could hear, I thought to myself.
‘You are probably right, councillor,’ I said.
‘Anyrooad, we appointed a very bright chap. Everybody on t’panel were very impressed with ‘im. As Lord Marrick said at t’time, he’s got more degrees than a thermometer.’
I steered the conversation onto another subject. ‘And how is your wife, councillor?’
‘Oh, she’s champion.’ He turned to the headmaster and took his arm. ‘He inspected mi wife, you know.’
‘I beg your pardon, councillor?’ said Mr Pennington-Smith, rather taken aback.
‘Mester Phinn. He inspected mi wife. Gave her a thorough goin’ ovver.’
‘He inspected your wife?’ the headmaster repeated, now with a quizzical expression on his face.
‘She’s an ‘eadteacher, my wife. Highcopse Primary School,’ explained the councillor. ‘Mester Phinn here went through her school like a dose of salts. Tha wants to watch out, headmaster, or he’ll be standing on your doorstep with his ruddy clipboard one of these days.’
Head Over Heels in the Dales Page 27
