Road to the Dales, The Story of a Yorkshire Lad

by Phinn, Gervase

  The next girlfriend was Judy and she was very different from Jocelyn. She had thick curly blonde hair like a doll's, which stuck out at the sides like giant earmuffs, and she had small breasts like the knobs on my grandmother's dresser. I met her in Rotherham Library, where she was poring over a thick tome in the corner of the reference section. I was revising for my O levels and sat down at the large oak table opposite her. She kept on glancing up when I had my head down and I kept on glancing up when she had her head down. When we glanced up at the same time, we started laughing and got talking. Then there was a coffee at the Ring o'Bells Cafe and I asked her out to the cinema.

  I guessed that Judy would prefer to see a romantic film where all the people seemed to do was talk in posh accents, give deeply meaningful looks and snatch the odd kiss, but I loved the films with excitement, films which in their sheer inventiveness had my eyes glued to the screen, films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Blob. They were badly acted and the special effects were sometimes laughable, but I was hooked on them. I didn't mind if you could see the zip down the back of the costume of The Man from Planet X, or that Godzilla was a magnified puppet and about as frightening as Noddy. However, after the last unforgettable experience with Brenda, when we'd seen The Amazing Colossal Man, I decided to give Zombies of the Stratosphere a miss and take Judy to see a historical adventure.

  We went to the Tivoli (the 'flea pit') to see The Black Rose, a romantic, action-packed tale starring Tyrone Power (what a name!). The bastard son of a Saxon nobleman flees medieval England for the Far East, where he falls for a beautiful Eurasian woman on her way to the court of Kublai Khan. He rescues the beautiful slave girl and confronts the Mongolian warlord, wonderfully overacted by Orson Welles behind heavy Oriental make-up. Judy sat through the film with her hands clasped tightly on her lap, totally impassive. When I tried to slide my arm around the back of her seat, she winced as if I had flicked water in her face and shuffled her body forward. And out of reach. There was no way I was going to chance kissing her. I thought it was a brilliant film, Judy thought it was stupid. It soon became apparent that when I made a comment or an observation she would take an opposing point of view.

  The big showdown came on our next date. It was over blood sports. I couldn't get excited either way about fox-hunting but I did enjoy going out to Wentworth Woodhouse to see the hunt setting off from Lord Fitzwilliam's stately home, all resplendent in red coats (I was told by Judy that they were actually called 'pinks'), white breeches and highly polished black boots. Judy was a vehement opponent.

  As a child I was always kind to animals (and still am), and never so much as pulled a leg off a crane-fly or stamped on a cockroach, but I couldn't get all upset about fox-hunting. I had seen what a fox could do when I went up to Archer's Farm. When the fox had broken into the hen coop and had bitten the heads off every one of the chickens, it had left the magnificent feathers of the rooster scattered all around the farmyard. Mr Archer had shaken his head angrily. 'I know the bloody creature has to live,' he said, 'but why doesn't it just take one of the chickens instead of killing the whole bloody lot!' This, of course, cut no ice with Judy.

  Then there was the fact that my brother Alec went with his falcon to Boston Park. This to Judy was barbaric. I disagreed. It was an amazing sight to see the bird of prey fly high up in the sky, wheeling around gracefully before plummeting on its unsuspecting prey. To see my brother swirl the lure around his head and see the falcon winging its way back to land on his gloved fist was astonishing.

  Although I could see things were deteriorating, I agreed to accompany Judy to the girls' high school Christmas dance. This was held in the school hall - a dark, cold place that smelt of floor polish and cabbage. It had been decorated with sprigs of holly and trimmings, pictures of snowy landscapes and other festive scenes to brighten the place up, but it still looked and smelt like a school hall. There was, of course, no mistletoe. It was a decorous affair and girls had been warned by the head-mistress in a special assembly to wear appropriate outfits: three-quarter-length dresses, low heels and no plun ging necklines. Boys should wear ties and sober jackets and come with a formal invitation, otherwise they would be refused entry. Some teachers observed proceedings with eagle eyes from the vantage point of the hall balcony, while others stalked the floor ensuring that nothing untoward happened. The dancing was of the ballroom variety and included the Gay Gordons, the Military Two-Step, the progressive barn dance and the waltz. It must have looked comical, big strapping lads with slicked-back hair and acne galloping, spinning, twirling their partners and then, for the waltz, shuffling around the floor treading on feet. The waltz was an opportunity for us to make contact with our partners. We were told by the teachers prior to the music starting that the boy was allowed to encircle a girl's waist but must keep his partner at arm's length, a full yard apart. Inevitably, as soon as the music started, we pulled the girl in close so our bodies touched, until we were spotted by a hawk-faced teacher who soon put a stop to any of that.

  During the evening I got the chance of dancing with Barbara, a big-bosomed, athletic girl who pulled me to her and then clung on like a limpet until we were separated by a tut-tutting teacher. Barbara had soft brown eyes and smelt of flowers and made my heart flutter.

  'You're not a very good dancer,' Judy told me waspishly as I walked her home. 'And I saw the way you were smooching with Barbara. She's a man-eater, you know.' Was Judy jealous, I wondered? I didn't say anything but savoured the memory.

  Things were not going well, and they went further downhill when I was invited round to her house for tea. It was a large detached villa with spacious rooms with high ceilings, heavy velvet curtains and a ticking grandfather clock in the hall. The front room (which Judy called the 'lounge') was meticulously tidy, with a marble fireplace, two great armchairs and a sofa covered in cushions, a thick plain brown carpet, an antique sideboard and a heavy oak bookcase full of books. Clusters of porcelain figures and fancy plates were displayed in alcoves. It was the sort of room I imagined Sherlock Holmes would have in Baker Street.

  Judy's mother, a stern-looking, pinched-faced woman with close-set, unsmiling eyes, observed me with a sort of amused tolerance, but her jowly, thick-lipped father, the very image of a military martinet, treated me with barely suppressed animosity. I sat nervously on the edge of the sofa as if at an interview for a job, fielding a whole lot of questions about my family, my background, my father's occupation, where I lived, what were my hobbies and which school I attended.

  'So you don't attend the grammar school then?' asked Judy's mother, her voice dripping with condescension.

  'No,' I replied, 'I failed my Eleven Plus.'

  'Really?' She cocked her head in an arrogant fashion. There was clear surprise in her voice when she observed, 'And Judy tells me you are sitting your O levels?'

  'Yes, that's right.'

  'I wasn't aware that students at a secondary modern sat O levels,' said her father.

  'Well, at South Grove we do,' I told him.

  'And do you think you will pass them, young man?' he asked.

  'Yes,' I said simply.

  He gave a dismissive grunt. Judy's mother gave a dry little cough and looked chillier than ever.

  'And do you attend church, Gerald?'

  'Yes,' I said. 'And my name's Gervase.'

  She arched an eyebrow and made a little moue with her mouth.

  'I go to St Bede's at Masborough,' I told her.

  'The Roman Catholic church?' She gave an unconvincing smile but there was no mistaking the disapproval in her voice.

  The interrogation was endless and Judy made no effort to help me out. There remained a polite and meticulous coldness, and I knew for certain that I was an unsatisfactory suitor for their precious daughter. I could well do without this, I thought. I declined a drink of lemonade and said I had to go. How I wish I had had the gumption to tell them, 'I have to dash, I have an appointment at the VD clinic this afternoon.'

  I
saw Judy at the library the following week. 'Mummy and Daddy don't think it's a good idea that I should see you any more,' she told me.

  'I couldn't agree with them more,' I replied, and returned to my books.

  When I was fixed up with a blind date by David, another friend, I was glad to wave goodbye to Judy. David's new girlfriend had an exotic sounding name - Ophelia or Giselle or something of the sort - and each Saturday morning she attended ballet classes. The owner of the dance school, an extremely regal-looking woman with a wonderful coiffure, had given her premises - a small dark annexe adjoining a looming black stone Methodist chapel - a grandiose name, something like the Marcia Mann Academy of Dance and Dramatic Arts. One Saturday, David, keen to show off his new conquest, took me down to the annexe. We placed three house bricks on top of each other to enable us to peer through the window at the girls, who were going through their balletic motions. There were about twenty or so girls of amazingly different shapes and sizes, in pink or white tights and short frilly skirts, cavorting, bending, stretching, jumping, leaping about and kicking their legs in the air. An old woman sat at an upright piano hammering away while another woman, in black, with silver-white hair and a hooked nose, put them through their paces. We were so engrossed in watching the budding ballerinas that we were unaware of the small window opening. Miss Mann's assistant, another witch of a woman, with a face that if looks could maim would have had us on crutches, bellowed out at us. 'Depart, you adolescent voyeurs, or I shall be compelled to call the constabulary!' I had no idea what a voyeur was, but I liked the sound of it and used it the following week in an essay for Mr Pike.

  Giselle or Ophelia's cousin was called Sandra and very different from the long, lithe and ethereal beauty David was courting. Sandra was a homely sort who wore her frizzy red hair in bunches. She wore large spectacles which hid her rather beautiful jade green eyes. She was one of life's innocents and collected miniature porcelain jugs and plates with the names and crests of seaside towns displayed on them. I remember how elated she was one Sunday when we went for a walk in Whiston Meadows. (When we 'walked out' we never held hands. Sandra preferred to link her arm through mine. We must have looked like an old married couple.)

  'My Uncle Cyril brought me back Filey and Bridlington last week,' she said, hardly able to contain her excitement. 'All I need now is Sandsend and Whitby and I've got the complete set of Yorkshire seaside resorts.'

  'Wow!' I said, trying to muster up some enthusiasm.

  Sandra started knitting me things. What was it about me that seemed to attract adolescent knitters? First Brenda and now Sandra. The first item she produced was a pair of massive grey and blue gloves with two fingers shorter than the rest, and then it was a sherbet yellow scarf, which hung around my neck like some hideously bright anaconda. She had knitted herself a matching one, and was upset when I failed to wear it when I took her to see a Rotherham United match and wore my red and white football supporters' scarf. I could just imagine what the fans would have thought, and done, had I walked through the gates at Mill-moor wearing the coloured monstrosity around my neck. Sandra was a nice enough girl but had the personality of petrified wood. There would be little or no conversation and anything I said would be greeted with, 'Yes, I know.' After three weeks I was not only exceedingly hot in all the woollen outfits but also exceedingly bored with nice homely Sandra and told her on the Doncaster bus that there was no future in our relationship.

  'But I'm halfway through a jumper for you,' she told me, pouting and pulling away her arm, which had been linked through mine. 'And it matches mine.'

  After Sandra I gave girls a bit of a rest for a while and concentrated on my studies. The opposite sex was too much like hard work.

  41

  Since I was small the circus has held a great fascination for me. In this day and age it is pretty tame by comparison to the shows that were staged in the 1950s. Most modern circuses are equally colourful but not as lively, diverse and exciting as those of the past. Gone are the more unusual and exotic acts, the risky displays, the outrageous characters and most of the animals. There was great excitement in the Phinn household when the circus came to town. Gandey's Circus set up on a piece of waste ground outside Rotherham. The huge tent, the 'Big Top', was erected, surrounded with brightly painted caravans and large cages, and an open-topped van with a loudspeaker blaring out martial music toured the town advertising the show. For the first performance the road to the circus was chock-a-block with excited children and their parents.

  The circus was a wildly colourful, noisy and varied affair, with tumblers, acrobats, knife-throwers, fire-eaters, jugglers, trapeze artists, tightrope walkers, bareback riders, lion tamers and clowns. I never found the clowns that funny. In fact, the figure with the fixed smile, tufts of red hair, great black-lined eyes and crimson nose was a frightening character, as was his companion - a sad, pasty-faced pierrot dressed in a white costume and a strange pointed hat. I loved the animal acts: the lion tamer in his red frock coat, close-fitting white trousers and shiny black boots, who cracked his whip to make the creatures snarl and spit and paw the air menacingly, the black bear that danced, the chimpanzees, dressed in garish clothes, the lumbering elephants and camels and the prancing horses.

  There was one highly unusual act, featuring an abnormally small man. It was called 'Chuck the Midget'. A large beefy individual picked up this little man and hurled him along a greasy mat, much to the amusement of the audience. Even as a youngster I thought this an incredibly cruel thing to do, and I was even more appalled when the same little man reappeared later in the show to be shot out of a cannon as 'The Human Cannonball'.

  It was the drama of the circus that appealed. My experience of the theatre as a child was restricted to the end of the pier shows in summer at Blackpool, the occasional stage show at the Regent Theatre in town and the pantomimes at Christmas.

  I had never seen classic plays until Mr Williams got me hooked on the theatre, and then I became a regular member of the audience at Rotherham Civic, Sheffield Playhouse, Doncaster Civic and the Sheffield Lyceum, but I had been in a theatre before. Occasionally my parents took me to a variety show at the Regent. The Regent was the only theatre in Rotherham and when I was a child it was opulence itself, with its velvet seats and high ceiling. I liked the excited chatter, the heady atmosphere and the colourful 'turns'. The variety evenings featured a mixture of musical and comedy performances by such entertainers as Ernie Page, 'England's leading impersonator', Sybil May, 'the famous Welsh Contralto' and Neville Roe, 'the boy soprano, with the voice of an angel'. Sometimes the shows included speciality acts like Patsy Silver, 'the Tomboy of the Air', Les Calantas, 'daring acrobats on the high wire', a juggler who threw flaming torches high in the air, and a rather aged magician in a shabby black tailcoat, with an assistant who was past her best (as my mother remarked), and whose tricks didn't quite work out. I was enthralled by 'Pianotoes Jacobson', the man with no arms, who played the piano with his toes. I waited at the stage door starry-eyed for the performers to autograph my programmes and thought they were so wonderfully exotic. Sadly 'Pianotoes' didn't make an appearance. I should have liked to have him sign my autograph book with his toes.

  Also at the Regent risque shows were staged that were certainly not deemed suitable by my parents for a young boy. When I appeared on stage at the Rotherham Civic Theatre in 2005 I was fascinated by the framed posters that covered the walls, advertising shows at the Regent Theatre in the 1950s. There was Goodbye to Striptease, featuring 'the ravishing and adorable Linzi, the Body Beautiful', and Daubney and Fay ('pert, pleasing and tasty'). There was Paul Raymond's 'fabulous Jane (saucy, spicy and sexy)' in 'the greatest of all sex shows, even more daring than ever before', 'the lovely Annette, Britain's loveliest model and her MUFF in nude studies' and featuring the 'Dance of the Fans, hotter than Harlem'. What amused me most about the posters were the details at the bottom about the clientele and the prices: 'OAPs - one shilling, Friday only, children - one shilling and one
and six, Monday to Friday.' What parent would take a child to see Annette, who posed naked for the entire world to see - save for her muff?

  I loved the pantomimes with their simple plots where good always triumphed, the outrageous cross-dressing characters, the doggerel, the ridiculously silly jokes and play on words, the foolish antics, the bright colours, the spectacularly gaudy costumes, the lively music and the audience participation, where you were encouraged to shout out as loud as you could. It is a remarkable fact that the pantomime has survived to the present day and is as popular as ever, despite competition from television, videos, DVDs, block-buster movies and sophisticated computer games. Everything about this over-the-top theatrical genre appeals to children and when things go wrong, which they frequently do, this is an added bonus.

  I was never frightened by the wicked witch or the cruel stepmother, the villainous King Rat or the scheming Sheriff of Nottingham, because I had met these characters in the stories my parents had read to me and I knew in my heart that they would eventually get their come-uppance. It was great fun, however, watching screaming children terrified by the 'baddie' being hauled from their seats and taken out by their embarrassed parents.

  It is an old theatrical chestnut: 'Never act with animals or children.' Both are, of course, entirely unpredictable. Once, so my father reminded me (although I have to admit I cannot remember, so it might be one of his tall tales), the Shetland pony harnessed to Cinderella's crystal coach (a large, round pumpkin-shaped cardboard cut-out) made an appearance on stage amidst delighted 'Oooohs' and 'Aaaahs' from the audience. Just as Cinderella emerged from her magical carriage in her shimmering silver dress and sparkling glass slippers, the pony decided it was a good time to relieve itself. The contents of the creature's bladder splashed on to the floor and trickled across the stage, into the orchestra pit and on to the piano, much to the alarm of the pianist and the amusement of the audience and the actors. Buttons, with great presence of mind, disappeared and returned a moment later with a mop and the lines: