‘Thank goodness for that,’ she sighed. ‘I just couldn’t face she of the joyless countenance and the viper’s tongue this morning. Mrs Savage has that wonderful effect of brightening up the room by leaving it.’
David grunted, shook his head and muttered something inaudible. He was obviously still simmering.
‘What did she want at half past ten on a Friday morning?’ Julie asked.
‘To see if we’d cleared the office,’ I told her.
‘Well, what’s it got to do with her?’ asked Julie.
‘She’s been put in charge of the move,’ I told her, ‘and she was checking up.’
‘As you well know, Julie,’ said David, ‘everything in the Education Department has to do with the meddlesome Brenda. She has her long red-nailed fingers in every pie. Well, if she thinks that pestering me will make me vacate this office any quicker, she’s got another thing coming. I shall move out in my own good time. And there’s no way I’m shifting all Sidney’s stuff downstairs.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Julie. ‘I’ll sort it out later.’
‘You can’t possibly do all that on your own,’ said David.
‘We’ll do it together, Julie,’ I said, ‘when I’ve finished moving my own things.’
‘OK,’ she said smiling. ‘Now, who’s for a cup of coffee?’
‘I’ll have a large strong sweet mug of caffeinated coffee, please,’ I said. ‘I have an idea that it’s going to be a long long day.’
‘I could do with a double brandy after that encounter,’ David remarked. He picked up a large cardboard box full of files. ‘I’ll dispense with the coffee, thank you, Julie, and make a start re-homing this little lot downstairs. I want to pick a spot well away from Sidney. When he’s in the office, I never get anything done.’
‘I’ll get the coffee and then I’ll give you a hand,’ Julie told me.
‘And, despite what I told the wicked witch of County Hall,’ said David, ‘I suppose I shall reluctantly have to help you move all Sidney’s stuff or I’ll never hear the last of it.’ He shook his head like a terrier. ‘Not that I wish to agree with Mrs Savage, but it is damned inconvenient for Sidney to be away just now. Typical, of course. That man could fall into a mound of steaming manure and emerge smelling of roses.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Julie, laughing, and headed for the door.
If the man in the street were to describe what he imagined a school inspectors’ secretary might look like, I guess he would picture a small, serious-minded and quietly efficient woman with grey hair scraped into a neat little bun at the back of her head. She would be dressed soberly with sensible flat-heeled shoes and a few bits of plain jewellery. She would be deferential, inconspicuous and innocuous. Well, Julie could not have been more different. She wore ridiculously short skirts, tight-fitting jumpers and outrageously high heels, and had thick bubbly dyed-blonde hair. Heads turned whenever this young woman with the hourglass figure and swinging hips sashayed down the marbled corridors of County Hall.
Everyone in the inspectors’ office loved Julie and relied heavily upon her. She had the qualities of many a Yorkshire lass; she was funny, excessively talkative, outspoken and bighearted but also possessed the sterling qualities of the really good secretary. Julie was industrious, highly organised and entirely loyal. She was also very discreet when it came to anything within the inspectors’ office but she had a useful network of contacts within County Hall who supplied her with all the latest gossip, which was relayed to us at regular intervals.
That morning, Julie was wearing a body-hugging turtleneck jumper of shocking pink, a black pelmet of a skirt, treacherously high red leather stiletto shoes and a pair of large pendulous silver earrings. It was not the sort of outfit best suited for someone who would be spending the day moving everything down two flights of stairs from one office to another.
A few minutes later she arrived back with two steaming mugs, which she set down on Dr Mullarkey’s desk, the only one with an area left uncovered.
‘So how was your holiday?’ I asked, reaching for the coffee.
‘Never again!’ she exclaimed, perching on the edge of the desk, crossing her long legs and throwing her head back like a model posing for a photograph.
‘Not too good then?’ I hazarded.
She uncrossed her legs and sat up straight. ‘I went camping in France with my boyfriend and his mum and dad. For the last three years we’ve been on holiday with Paul’s parents, and I should know better by now. Well, this is definitely the last time I’m going with them. After that disastrous time in Spain three years ago when Paul fell asleep in the sun and woke up like a lobster with an attitude problem and a face full of blisters the size of balloons, we decided to stay in England the next year and go to Skegness in his auntie’s caravan. I think I told you it rained for the full two weeks except for the one fine day when Paul broke his ankle jumping off the sea wall. I spent most days at the hospital and most nights wide awake listening to Paul’s father snoring like a hippopotamus with sinus trouble.’
‘Yes, I remember you regaling me with the Skegness saga. So what happened in France?’
‘It was worse,’ she said. ‘We were squashed in two leaking tents near a stagnant, mosquito-infested lake, the showers packed up, Paul’s mum moaned about the food the entire time, and his dad got into an argument with the site manager when he told him that the French were pretty quick to surrender to the Nazis in the last war and if it wasn’t for the British Army bailing them out, he’d be wearing great jackboots and speaking German.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said, smiling.
‘Then Paul got food poisoning from a plateful of prawns, the car broke down just as we were driving onto the ferry and all the French lorry drivers we held up behind us hurled abuse at us. When we did finally manage to get across the Channel, the Customs men found and confiscated the extra bottles of duty free that Paul’s mother had hidden under her coat, and she never stopped whingeing all the way back to Yorkshire.’
‘Yes, it was certainly eventful,’ I said.
‘Never again,’ sighed Julie, shaking her blonde curls. She took a sip of coffee. ‘Have you been to France?’
‘I went to Paris with the school when I was fifteen and I can’t say it was a great success,’ I told her, remembering the miserable time I had had in a dark and spartan hostel on the outskirts of the city, sleeping in a dormitory colder than death, on a bunk bed as hard as nails. ‘It came as quite a shock,’ I told Julie, ‘that all the French I had been learning for years and years at school was completely incomprehensible to the Parisians. People just laughed when I opened my mouth.’
‘Well, it’ll be the last time I go to France, I can tell you,’ said Julie.
‘Oh, I shall go again one day,’ I said. ‘Of course, it helps having a wife who can speak the language. Christine spent a year there as part of her French course at college so I won’t make a fool of myself the next time. I’ll let her do all the talking. When the baby gets older, we intend to go camping in Brittany.’
‘So where did you go for your holidays this summer then?’ Julie asked.
‘We stayed in Yorkshire,’ I told her, recalling the wonderful two weeks Christine and our baby son Richard had spent in a guesthouse in Robin Hood’s Bay on the east coast.
The weather had been gloriously bright and rain-free, and we had enjoyed many a happy hour sitting on the beach in the sunshine making sand castles – I claimed I had to get in practice for when Richard was older – collecting shells, searching for crabs in the rock pools, walking along the cliff top with the baby strapped to my back, and exploring the little snickleways between the cottages in the village. Each evening, when the baby was safely tucked up in his cot, Christine and I would sit in the guesthouse’s conservatory that overlooked the great sweep of the bay. What a scene it was: the looming cliffs rising from a placid sea turned pinkand gold by the setting sun, the jutting outcrops of dark purple rocks reaching out like gnarl
ed fingers. I had been so happy.
Tricky Dicky, as we called him, had not lived up to his nickname; he had been far from demanding. In fact, he had not been an ounce of trouble, feeding happily, sleeping soundly and crying rarely. He was such a contented child that we really couldn’t believe our good fortune in having such a model baby.
‘So was it good?’ asked Julie.
‘It was super,’ I told her. ‘We had a great time.’
‘Well,’ she said, stretching, ‘I’m glad somebody did. You had better finish your coffee. We have work to do.’
By the end of the afternoon, the small cramped room that had been my place of work for four years was clear of everything. David, Julie and I had made journey after journey up and down the narrow stairs, struggling with boxes full of reports and guidelines, balancing armfuls of files and folders, carting books and journals. The worst stuff to carry down was, of course, everything that belonged to Sidney. By five o’clock, all that remained in the office was the furniture that was not coming with us – the four heavy oak desks with their brass-handled drawers, the ancient wooden swivel chairs, and the now-empty grey metal filing cabinets and dark heavy bookcases.
David, Julie and I surveyed the room, hot, tired and ready for home.
‘Well, that’s a job well done,’ I said.
‘I shall miss this room, you know,’ said David. ‘Even though we complained over the years about the lack of space, the icy draughts in winter and the unbearable heat in summer –’
‘The creaking floor and threadbare bit of carpet,’ added Julie.
‘And the uncomfortable chairs and the fact that we couldn’t find anything amidst the clutter, but it did have character,’ said David. He ran his hand across a desktop. ‘I shall miss my old desk.’
‘Although I, too, feel rather sorry having to leave the place,’ I said, ‘we shall be able to spread out in the new office with its modern furniture, and we won’t have those stairs to climb every day.’
At that very moment we heard heavy footsteps on the selfsame stairs, accompanied by a loud and discordant voice giving a rendering of ‘Come Back to Sorrento’.
‘Tell me I am imagining things,’ whispered David.
‘No,’ said Julie, ‘it’s Mr Clamp all right.’
The great bearded figure with the deep-set, earnest eyes appeared at the door like a pantomime villain. Sidney stopped singing, removed a large fedora hat in a flourish and beamed at us. Then he stared beyond us and around the empty office.
‘Sweet angels of mercy!’ he cried. ‘Where is everything? The place is as bare as Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.’ We stood looking at him, stony-faced and silent. ‘Whatever is the matter with you three?’ he asked. ‘You look like some strange Eastern statues. From the look on your faces, it appears that I am intruding on some private grief.’
David breathed in noisily, raised his eyes heavenwards but said nothing.
‘Hello, Sidney,’ I said.
‘Did you forget, Mr Clamp,’ asked Julie, ‘that we were moving into the new office this week and that we had to clear everything out from here to there?’
‘Aaaaah,’ groaned Sidney smacking his forehead dramatically with the flat of his hand. ‘The move, the move! Of course, we’re relocating to the new office this term, aren’t we?’
‘We are,’ I said.
‘I only popped in to collect my mail,’ he said. He tapped his chin thoughtfully. ‘Was it this week we were supposed to be moving?’
‘It was,’ I said.
‘We have to be out of here by the end of the day so Social Services can come in on Monday,’ added Julie. ‘The three of us have had to take all your stuff downstairs to the new office for you.’
‘We assumed you weren’t coming in today,’ I told him.
‘How awfully decent of you to move my bits and bobs,’ said Sidney. Then his face clouded over. ‘I say, I do hope that you have taken great care with my things. There were a lot of valuable artefacts amongst my possessions. Dear God,’ he said, his eyes roving round the almost empty room, ‘what have you done with Aphrodite?’
Sidney had a fairly ghastly white plaster model of the Goddess of Love, which he used in his drawing classes.
‘Aphrodite is safe and well in the new office,’ replied David who, amidst loud complaining, had carried the scantily clad female downstairs.
‘I trust you haven’t been heavy handed with the portfolios and not damaged any of the artwork,’ Sidney continued. ‘I know how maladroit you can sometimes be, David.’ He strode across to what had been his desk, and wrenched open the top drawer. ‘Oh heavens, there were some most important documents in this drawer. What’s happened to them?’
‘Don’t panic,’ I said, ‘I’ve locked them away in your new desk downstairs.’
The telephone sitting on Sidney’s desk suddenly rang, echoing round the almost empty room. Julie, standing nearest it, picked it up.
‘Inspectors’ office,’ she said. She listened for a moment, nodded her blonde head, and then replaced the receiver. ‘That was Mr Reid of Social Services. He said that we shouldn’t rush as they are somewhat behind schedule and won’t be ready to move up here until Tuesday at the earliest.’
‘Open the window, Gervase,’ said David, slowly and quietly, ‘I am about to jump out.’
2
Thursday morning of the first week of the new autumn term found me at Ugglemattersby County Junior School to undertake what I imagined to be a morning’s routine follow-up inspection. The building, unlike many of the Dales village schools in Yorkshire, was entirely without character: a featureless, squat, grey stone structure with long, metal-framed windows, blue slate roof and a heavy black door. It was dwarfed by the neighbouring boarded-up, red-brick Masonic Hall on one side and a down-at-the-mouth public house on the other.
I had visited the school some two years earlier on a bleak and blustery morning in late April. Setting off from the Inspectors’ Division of the Education Department in the bustling market town of Fettlesham, I had driven through a desolate, rain-soaked landscape of rolling grey moors to reach the school in the large sprawling village of Ugglemattersby.
On that occasion, I had not been impressed with the standard of education provided and my largely critical report had led to the enforced early retirement of the headteacher. Mr Sharples, a dour man, with the smile of a martyr about to be burnt at the stake, had rattled on in wearisome detail about the stresses and strains, pressures and problems, difficulties and disappointments he had to face day after day. He had bemoaned the awkward parents, interfering governors, disillusioned teachers, lazy cleaners and wilful children, and now critical school inspectors had appeared on the scene to depress him even more.
‘I feel like jumping off Hopton Crags,’ he had told me disconsolately, ‘or down a pothole at Grimstone Gill, I really do.’
In actual fact, he had jumped – jumped at the chance, when offered a generous package, to retire early and the last I had heard of him he was running a health-food shop in Whitby, happily selling dried fruit, cashew nuts and wholemeal flour.
A new headteacher, Mr Harrison, was appointed. I had sat on the interview panel and had been impressed with this youthful, bright-eyed deputy headteacher from a large multiracial school in inner-city London, who had performed extremely well, impressing the panel with his enthusiasm, good humour and by the vivid description of how he would set about changing things for the better were he to be appointed.
Sadly on this September morning, if the initial impressions I had were anything to go by, the new headteacher had not come up to expectations, for little appeared to have altered since my last visit. What I thought would be a meeting of ten or fifteen minutes before classes started, turned out to be quite different.
‘It’s been difficult, Mr Phinn,’ Mr Harrison told me sadly, tugging nervously at his small moustache. ‘I rather imagined that moving north to such a lovely part of the country, to become the headteacher of a village school in rur
al Yorkshire, would be idyllic and certainly less challenging and stressful than at my last school in the inner city. I little imagined the problems I would have to face.’ He sounded unnervingly like his predecessor and, indeed, was beginning to take on Mr Sharples’ appearance, too.
The headteacher seemed to have aged considerably since our last meeting at his interview. As I sat in his cramped office that morning, I was concerned at the change I saw in him after so short a time. Gone were the broad and winning smile, the bright eyes, the bubbly enthusiasm and the confident manner. He looked ashen and deeply uncomfortable and stared at me with the doleful eyes of a sick spaniel.
‘Perhaps you would like to tell me about it,’ I said, realising that what I imagined would be a pleasant, uneventful routine visit was turning into something likely to be far more problematic.
‘Well, this is a very different world from the one I knew in London,’ Mr Harrison continued. He interlaced his fingers slowly and rested them beneath his chin in the attitude of a child at prayer, and then took a deep audible breath. ‘I came from a large multi-cultural and very vibrant inner-city school where the staff worked hard and pulled together. The children were challenging and, yes, perhaps a little too lively at times. We had our fair share of problems, but it was a very positive and productive environment. Ugglemattersby is completely different. In terms of discipline, the children are biddable enough, though rather blunt, but everything is so – how can I put it – laid back. Your report on Mr Sharples’ regime quite rightly mentioned the lack of rigour and creativity in the curriculum and, since starting, I have attempted to change things but, sadly, with little apparent success. People in this part of the world seem very resistant to change. The parents on the surface are friendly – well, most of them – and, like their children, they too certainly speak their minds, but I can’t say I’ve been accepted. I think you have to live in the area for upwards of three centuries to lose the tag of “off-comed-un”.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I replied. ‘I’ve only been in this part of the county for four years myself and, despite being Yorkshire born and bred, I am definitely still in the category of the alien foreigner.’
The Heart of the Dales Page 2
