‘Aye, it is,’ said his cousin.
Jacob put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Well, it’s about time to get ‘em in for t’dinner. Prime beef toneet, Mester Phinn, wi’ Yorkshire puddin’ an’ onion gravy.’ As I finished the half pint, he said, ‘I say, I ‘opes tha’s goin’ to be a bit more talkative like, wi’ yer after-dinner speech. You’ve said nobbut a few words in t’last ‘alf hour.’ Barry looked down at me, gave me a knowing look and winked.
17
My favourite time in the school year is Christmas. It is then that teachers make a massive effort to create the magical atmosphere of this very special season. Schools at Christmas-time are ablaze with colour. Fat Father Christmases, their silver sleighs pulled by teams of prancing brown reindeer, gallop across the walls. Fir trees twinkle in entrance halls, and corridors are festooned with bright decorations. Each classroom has a crib crammed with little wooden figures crowding around the manger. Christmas is a time for children.
Of all the activities which take place at Christmas it is the infant Nativity play to which I most look forward. Innocent children re-enacting one of the greatest stories of all time capture the essence of Christmas. To see Mary, aged six, draped in pale blue and tightly clutching Baby Jesus (usually a large plastic doll) to her chest, never fails to bring a tear to the eye. To see Joseph, a thick multicoloured towel draped over his head (usually held in place by an elastic belt with a snake clasp) and attired in a dressing gown and red socks, never fails to bring a sympathetic smile to the lips. And then there are the shepherds (usually a motley group of little boys who scratch, fidget and pick their noses throughout the performance), the Three Wise Men (who invariably forget their lines or drop the gifts), the adoring angels clad in white sheets with bits of tinsel stapled to the bottom and uncomfortable-looking cardboard wings strapped to their backs and, of course, there’s the grumpy Innkeeper, who very often steals the show. There is something very special and heart-warming about the infant Nativity.
The first Nativity play this year took place at Willingforth Primary School. Willingforth was something of a showpiece school and the headteacher, the formidable Miss Pilkington, was one of the most highly regarded educationalists in the county. So I anticipated that the performance would be rather special, and indeed it was.
From the outside, the elegant grey stone building, with high leaded windows and imposing oak door, resembled a substantial, immaculately maintained private residence. Inside, there was just the one large airy classroom. It was an impressively decorated room, blue being the dominant colour – pale blue walls, navy blue and cream ceiling beams and supports, and blue floral curtains. The Reading Corner was attractively inviting with blue carpet and cushions. I recalled thinking on my first visit that it was the first colour-co-ordinated classroom I had seen.
The school looked particularly warm and cheerful that cold December afternoon. Greens and reds, gold and silver made the room look very bright and festive. Using tissue paper of varying colours, the children had transformed the windows into the most wonderful stained glass, depicting scenes in the early life of the Holy Family. On a table in one corner there was a small crib with delicate porcelain figures. In the Reading Corner stood a modest Christmas tree.
For the Nativity play, the desks had been removed and replaced with rows of chairs. By the time I arrived the place was packed with mums and dads, grandparents and governors all facing a makeshift stage.
As I made my way to my reserved seat in the front row, a figure a few rows back stood up and waved at me. It was Connie, almost unrecognisable without her bright pink nylon overall. She had told me the week before that, since there were no courses on at the Centre that day, she was taking the afternoon off. She was determined that this year she was not going to miss the Nativity play in which one of her grandchildren, little Lucy, had a starring role.
Miss Pilkington, a tall, elegant woman, opened proceedings by welcoming everyone. Then the Chairman of Governors, Canon Shepherd, a jolly little man with ruffled hair and flabby cheeks, read in a deep sonorous voice a passage from Luke: ‘The Angel Salutes the Virgin Mary’. As the children sang ‘Away in a Manger’, a pretty little girl playing Mary entered, accompanied by a small boy in the regulation brown dressing gown. Despite the multicoloured towel draped over his head, I recognised Terry the Terror, the boy who had almost caused a riot at the school the previous year. Forget about the miracle of Christmas! A modern miracle had been performed at the school and I was undoubtedly now looking at Terry the Tamed. Mary and Joseph knocked on the inn door, found there was no room and were shown to the stable. Things went like clockwork until the Three Kings arrived on the scene. The first little boy, carrying a golden box and dressed in a red velvet cloak made from curtains and sporting a cardboard crown which covered half his face, announced loudly:
I am Melchior and gold I bring,
In homage of our new born king.
I have travelled from afar,
Following yon twinkling star.
The second Wise Man strode onto the stage carrying a blue box. He too boomed out his words:
I am Gaspar. Frankincense I bring,
In homage of our new born king.
I have travelled through the night,
Following yon star which shines so bright.
The third Wise Man entered carrying a green box. He shuffled nervously to the centre of the stage and stared around him wide-eyed and frightened as if lost in a busy shopping street. There was a pregnant silence. The child sniffed, then his small shoulders heaved and great tears rolled down his small red cheeks. Suddenly he let out a most desperate and plaintive cry: ‘I don’t know who I am. Will someone tell me who I am?’
‘You’re Balthazar, Gavin,’ Miss Pilkington said in a loud stage whisper, from the side of the room, ‘and you’ve brought Baby Jesus a special present of myrrh.’
‘I don’t know who I am,’ the child whimpered again. ‘Will someone tell me who I am?’
‘Balthazar!’ the audience chorused.
‘I don’t want to do it!’ he wailed. ‘I don’t want to do it.’
The headteacher moved forward, helped the little boy place the box before Mary and Joseph, gave him a cuddle and, taking his hand, led him off the stage. We all applauded loudly.
It was wonderful drama. I had watched a very similar scene when I had accompanied the teachers and students of The Lady Cavendish High School on that fateful school trip. During the production of King Lear, the actor playing the lead had entered just as the small child had done that afternoon, looking lost and alone and frightened. Poor, deranged Lear, he had plucked at his hair, thrown out his arms and appealed to the heavens: ‘Who is it that can tell me who I am?’ It is one of the saddest lines of Shakespeare. On that occasion there had been no Miss Pilkington to help out.
Every infant headteacher has a story to tell about the Christmas Nativity play. There was the time the Innkeeper, when asked if there was any room in the inn answered, ‘Plenty,’ and ushered the startled Holy Family inside; the occasion when Mary had dropped Baby Jesus, immediately bursting into floods of tears as the pink doll rolled off the stage; the time that the Archangel Gabriel had informed Mary that he ‘had tidings of great joy to bring’ but had completely forgotten what they were; the occasion when a frightened little girl decided to announce, ‘Welcome to our Harvest Festival’ because she was fed up with being teased because she couldn’t say the word ‘Nativity’; the memorable time when the large cardboard and wooden star which had been suspended on a wire above the stage, had fallen onto Joseph who, very much out of character, had rubbed his head and exclaimed, ‘Bloody ‘ell!’
In one school I had eavesdropped on a conversation between a parent and the teacher concerning the Nativity play. ‘So what’s this play about, then?’ asked the mother in all seriousness. In another school I had heard a father complain that, ‘You allus do t’same play every Christmas. Tha wants to do summat different.’
Infant Nativities are
rarely without incident and the one at Tupton Road Primary School the following week was no exception. When I received an invitation from the headteacher to join the guests, I readily accepted.
The headteacher, Mrs Wilson, wended her way through the throng of parents and governors to greet me at the entrance.
‘Rather a different reception this time, Mr Phinn,’ she said, extending a long white hand and smiling broadly.
‘Yes, indeed,’ I replied rather sheepishly and wishing she hadn’t reminded me of a rather embarrassing incident the previous year when I had been apprehended by the local policeman who had been tipped off by a local resident that I was a suspicious character loitering outside the school. All I had been doing was writing up some notes prior to my visit, for which I had arrived early.
Mrs Wilson was a tall, pasty-faced woman with short, dyed black hair and heavy make-up. It had occurred to me on my previous visit, and I was reminded of it now, how very like a racoon she looked with her pale face and large dark eyes nestling in heavy black eye-shadow. Fussy Mrs Thickett, a mousy-haired, sharp-faced woman, was at her side nodding nervously.
The play opened in the traditional fashion with Mary and Joseph setting off for Bethlehem. Joseph, a confident little boy in large glasses, spoke his lines clearly and loudly. Holding Mary’s hand he gently led her across the small makeshift stage. Things didn’t go so well when the Innkeeper appeared. He was a sturdily built child with spiky ginger hair and his two front teeth missing. It was clear he had a number of family members present that afternoon for there were adoring ‘Oohs’ and ‘Aahs’ whenever he opened his mouth.
Before Joseph could even enquire whether there might be room at the inn, the little bruiser, arms folded tightly over his chest and chin jutting out like a miniature Mussolini, announced: ‘There’s no room!’
‘But we have travelled far and –’ began Joseph.
‘There’s no room,’ repeated the innkeeper even louder.
‘But –’ started Joseph.
‘Did you not hear me?’ The innkeeper bellowed. ‘I said there was no room. You can go round the back in the barn.’
‘A barn?’ repeated Mary. ‘We can’t go in a barn.’
‘There’s nowhere else,’ said the innkeeper. ‘Take it or leave it.’
At this point the little boy caught sight of an elderly woman in the middle of the front row. It was obviously his granny. He grinned maniacally and tinkled the air with his fingers. The old lady, rather unhelpfully, smiled and waved back. This continued for what appeared an age.
‘Shane!’ came the teacher’s disembodied voice from offstage. ‘Shane! Come off!’
The Innkeeper continued to smile and wave. The voice from the wings was now more insistent. ‘Shane Merryweather, get off that stage right now!’
The child was finally prevailed upon to exit stage left but did so in a flourish, smiling and waving, like a famous actor receiving the plaudits of a smitten audience.
Things then went smoothly until the arrival of the Three Wise Men.
‘I bring you gold,’ said the first child, laying a small golden box at Mary’s feet and bowing low.
‘I bring you myrrh,’ said the second, laying a coloured jar at Mary’s feet and bowing low.
‘And I bring you frankincense,’ said the third king, laying down his gift.
‘Bow!’ came the disembodied voice from the wings. ‘Bow!’
The third king looked perplexed. He stared around him like a rabbit caught in the headlight’s glare.
‘Jason!’ came the voice again. ‘Bow! Bow!’
The little boy looked first at the audience and then at Mary. ‘Woof!’ he said. ‘Woof! Woof!’
I was still chuckling to myself when I arrived for my next appointment at St Bartholomew’s School. Sister Brendan greeted me in the entrance hall and ushered me into her room. With her black habit, dark, darting eyes and a sharp little beak of a nose, she always reminded me of a hungry blackbird.
‘I do so love Christmas,’ she trilled. ‘It’s such a joyous time. Such a great festival in the Christian calendar – the birth of Our Lord.’
‘But not as great as Easter, Sister?’ I said mischievously, recalling my conversation with Elizabeth. ‘Isn’t that the greatest festival in the Christian calendar, when Jesus suffered on the cross, died for our sins and rose from the dead?’
‘Why, Mr Phinn,’ cried the nun, her small eyes widening in amazement, ‘I never knew you were a bible scholar.’
This would be the last visit to those schools involved in the ‘Spirituality in the Curriculum’ initiative. During the Christmas holidays I would have a lengthy report to compose but I had seen a large number of lessons, observed countless assemblies and had had a range of lively discussions with headteachers and teachers so I had a clear idea of what I was going to write.
‘Mrs Webb is all ready for you,’ explained Sister Brendan, a small smile appearing on her lips. ‘A little nervous, I have to say, after the last rather embarrassing occasion. This afternoon you’ll be joining her for story-time, which, hopefully, will be without incident.’ Even nuns, as I soon discovered, can sometimes be wrong.
The story Mrs Webb began reading that afternoon was the deeply moving account about the woodcarver. He had been a happy, good-natured man until his wife and child had died, then he ceased to smile and became bitter and unpleasant to anyone who came near him. One cold winter’s day a widow and her small son called on him and asked him to carve a set of Nativity figures and that’s when a Christmas miracle happened.
Mrs Webb had arrived at the most poignant part of the story, when the woodcarver, having tried again and again to carve the faces of Mary and her baby but without success, finally reaches into a drawer and takes out the charcoal sketch of a young woman sitting in a rocking chair cradling a tiny baby. It was of his wife and child. With tears streaking down his face, he carves Mary in her rough woollen shawl looking down lovingly at her precious baby. At this point Mrs Webb stopped reading and a tangible silence fell. She put her hand to her face and began to cry. I was at a loss what to do. Never, in all the years I had been observing teachers, had I ever seen a teacher break down like this in front of her class. She took a handkerchief from her handbag, dabbed her eyes and continued to weep.
‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t read any more.’
I felt a lump come into my throat and my eyes began to fill up too. Then Peter, the small boy who had been instructed to go to the staff room and get ‘the bleeding head’, stood up and strode to the front of the class. He took the book from the teacher’s hand, gently patted her on the arm and said gently, ‘You sit down, Miss, I’ll finish the story.’
Mrs Webb was not alone in crying that afternoon. I had witnessed exactly what the ‘Spirituality in the Curriculum’ initiative was all about. I had seen awe and wonder in Mrs Webb’s classroom that cold December day.
At break-time I sought out the boy. He was in the playground sliding with his friends on the icy surface. ‘What you did today,’ I told him, ‘was a noble deed.’
He looked up at me seriously. ‘Pardon, sir?’
‘It was a very kind and thoughtful thing to do, helping Mrs Webb out like that.’
His smile stretched from one ear to the other. ‘Oh, that,’ he told me cheerfully, ‘I often have to do it.’
I called in at Crompton Primary School a few days later, just prior to the school breaking up for the Christmas holidays. Mrs Gardiner’s room was so crammed full of brightly-wrapped Christmas packages that there was hardly any room for me to get in.
‘Sorry about this, Mr Phinn,’ apologised the headteacher, clambering around the piles of parcels. ‘We don’t want the children to see them and my room is the safest place.’
‘Are these all for the children?’ I asked, amazed by the spectacle before me.
‘Indeed, they are,’ the headteacher replied. ‘We like to give each child a small gift at Christmas. Always a book. Nursery rh
ymes or fairy tales for the infants, a poetry anthology or children’s novel for the older ones.’
‘What a lovely idea,’ I said. ‘But however can you afford it?’
‘Well, the Rotary Club and the Lions help out,’ explained Mrs Gardiner, ‘and we have raffles during the year, bingo sessions and other fund-raising activities. It raises just about enough. You see, some of our children might have wonderful televisions at home but no books at all, not a one. They get lots of toys and sweets and bicycles on Christmas morning but seldom a book. They never visit the library and are rarely seen in a bookshop. So I think it’s important for them to have a reading book. Then there are other children in the school who will get precious little at all for Christmas. Our book might be one of the few things they get. Little Matty, for example. You remember Matty, the boy who stole the pound coin? Well, his mother told him last year that Father Christmas had run out of presents when he got to him. Sad, isn’t it?’
Up and Down in the Dales Page 25
