Shepherd of Another Flock

by David Wilbourne

  ‘Perhaps we ought to make Joseph Foord a local saint,’ I joked.

  ‘He were clever, but he were no saint,’ Eva continued, as if she had gone to school with a man who had died over two hundred years ago. ‘I bought a book on history of Helmsley from Claridge’s years back, and I read it from cover to cover – it weren’t half a gripping read!’ she joked, a twinkle in her eyes. ‘But it had pages galore on Joseph Foord. He took the old earl to court for not paying him his dues as his agent, and won. Nobody dared to do that in those days. Lord Feversham walked these hills like a god, and God help anybody who crossed him!’

  ‘What’s changed?’ Lord Feversham interrupted. ‘I may not be God, but as far as you’re concerned, I’m the next best thing!’

  ‘And then he got a girl in the family way, but refused to admit that he was t’ father and do the decent thing and marry her,’ Eva continued, blithely ignoring Lord Feversham’s chilly tone.

  ‘Given his skill for transporting liquid up and down hill and dale for miles, perhaps he merely ejaculated at East Moors and she conceived in Bridlington!’ Lord Feversham guffawed.

  Eva blushed. ‘Ee, God-like or not, you gentry are mucky beggars. And in front of our new vicar and Father Bert to boot. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, my Lord! Foord refused to wed her anyhow, even took the girl, whose child he’d fathered, t’ court for defamation. He were drummed out of the Quakers for failing to repent and joined the Church of England. Mind you, thinking about it, even if he had wed her, he’d have been drummed out of the Quakers. She was his second cousin, and they were very particular about that sort of thing.’

  ‘Good old Church of England, we’ll let anybody in!’ Lord Feversham said, still chuckling away as we turned the corner and all Helmsley was set before us: the church with its tall Victorian tower, the ruined castle, the red-roofed town with the beck tumbling down Castlegate, no doubt drawing its water from one or two of Foord’s races somewhere or other. All blazing in glorious autumn sunshine, looking picture perfect.

  ‘I don’t care what you say, Eva, he was a saint,’ Lord Feversham said. ‘He built seventy miles of water races to all these moor-top villages, quenching their thirst for almost two hundred years. You can allow a man who does that a bit of latitude with the odd foolish night of passion! And as for taking on my ancestor, well, he was a queer old stick who deserved taking down a peg or two.’

  He dropped Eva off at a small terraced bungalow which can’t have consisted of more than a tiny kitchen, living room and bedroom. There were twenty such bungalows in the cramped close; I guess they were the final resting place for all his Lordship’s tenant farmers, totally spent after a life of hard labour cultivating the moors.

  ‘Just hang on a minute, my Lord,’ Eva said, as she disappeared through her front door. Two minutes later she returned with three margarine containers brimful with blackberries. ‘Just a small present for bringing me home; a few blackberries for your good lady, my Lord, and your good lady, Vicar, and your good lady, Father Bert.’

  ‘I don’t have a good lady,’ Father Bert replied, his voice a cross between wistful and terse, accepting the berries nevertheless.

  ‘No, just like Joseph Foord didn’t have a good lady. Really, whatever the century, you men are all the same,’ she laughed, as she waved us goodbye.

  Father Bert kept a ponderous silence for the remainder of our journey. With a cheery wave, Lord Feversham dropped the pair of us off at Canons Garth. ‘She’s not my good lady, she’s just a good friend,’ was Father Bert’s parting shot as he nipped back home for a cuppa before returning for Evening Prayer. I thought of the juicy roast beef Margaret served up for him day after day from generations of cattle, hefted to hills no doubt watered by Foord’s races. Not to mention washing muddy surplices clean. Good friend indeed!

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I raced along the A170 with just a quarter of an hour to cycle the four miles to Ryedale School for another near-death experience, otherwise known as taking an assembly. Once again the speeding traffic lured me to detour via minor roads where the air was like wine compared to sulphurous exhaust fumes. It was becoming a familiar route; over the old level crossing at Harome Gates, then a fast pedal uphill, anticipating an uninterrupted view over to the rounded Wolds. But this time disaster struck, as a hare, disturbed by a combine harvesting a field to my left, bounded straight into my path. I braked sharply but there was no way I could avoid the animal, the size of a border terrier, and I braced myself for a collision. It’s funny what runs through your mind in the milliseconds before a disaster; images of me being catapulted over the handlebars before slamming into the tarmac’s unforgiving surface, images of the beautiful hare, her back broken by the impact, writhing in her death throes.

  Incredibly, there was no collision. The hare effortlessly leapt over me, springing six feet into the air as if avoiding cycling vicars was part and parcel of her every day. She made a good landing on the grass verge before ducking under a wooden fence and streaking across a ploughed field. Within seconds she was just a dot on the horizon. Ever since my childhood days deep in the Vale of York, I have always paused in wonder at a hare’s sheer speed. Now I added a hare’s leap to my repertoire of things which didn’t just flabbergast me, but came to my rescue.

  ‘Swaledale sheep are t’ best!’ As I chained up my bike, Fraser was lecturing a small group of pupils of assorted sizes, huddled together outside the school entrance. He was sporting the same baggy woollen jumper, the same muddy corduroy trousers, the same ruffled wiry hair and the same air of nonchalance which I’d witnessed on my last visit.

  ‘Why Swaledale, sir? My dad says Wenlseydales have a sweeter taste.’

  ‘They don’t have horns though. You need something to get hold of when you’re sh—’

  ‘Shagging them, sir?’ one of the girls teased.

  ‘Shearing them,’ a totally unfazed Fraser continued. ‘And the horns are good when it’s lambing time too.’

  ‘Oo, it proper brings tears to my eyes. I don’t fancy giving birth at all, let alone a little bugger with horns attached!’ the girl interrupted again.

  ‘No, the horns aren’t there at birth,’ Fraser continued, refusing to be drawn. ‘Those ewes having a particular difficult birth can get a bit skittish and take off. You’d never catch them again without the horns. And they’re good sheep for rugged places like these moors. No fox is going to chance being butted by a Swaledale with a good pair of horns on her.’

  ‘How much do they cost, sir?’

  ‘Fifty quid seems to be the going rate. I’ve got half a dozen going spare at the moment so how about two hundred and fifty for t’lot?’

  A promising deal was thwarted as the Head rushed out of the main door. ‘What are you lot doing hanging around out here? Go to your form rooms for registration this minute.’ I didn’t go to my form room, since I was getting slightly better at realizing the Head wasn’t addressing me personally. Even so, I wasn’t anywhere near as relaxed as Fraser, who clearly made blasé an art form. The youngsters rushed inside with Fraser ambling after them. ‘Now, then,’ he said as he passed by the Head, distinctly unruffled. In contrast, the Head looked as if he was going to burst a blood vessel.

  My assembly was dead simple. Drawing on Galileo’s swinging censer calculations in Pisa Cathedral (as you do), I had brought along a piece of string exactly one metre long, with a brass weight which I had pinched from Rachel’s kitchen scales tied at one end. My limited experience with knots became all too clear, because as soon as I started swinging my improvised pendulum, the weight flew off, whistling past the Head’s ear before clonking noisily down each of the steps. All 350 pupils started giggling. ‘Be quiet,’ barked the Head, giving me his infamous death stare. I jumped off the stage, retrieved the weight, and the deputy head came to my rescue, expertly securing it with a couple of half-hitches to prevent further incident. Spotting the lass who helped out at my last assembly lurking at the back of the hall, I called her up to act as
timekeeper. She sauntered up to the stage, hips swaying, tucking in her blouse before the Head barked at her.

  I swung the pendulum once again, asking the whole school to count to ten full swings out loud, a count-up rather than a count-down, 1,2,3 . . . 8,9,10.

  ‘How long did that take?’ I asked Tracy.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘The second hand on my watch is broken.’

  Exasperated, I took off my own watch and passed it to her. ‘Give me the nod when the second hand gets to twelve, and I’ll start swinging.’

  The second hand must just have passed twelve, meaning that we had to wait nearly sixty seconds before we could begin our count-up again. It seemed a very long minute, with me desperately trying to ad lib, telling the story of an eccentric Durham professor who only adjusted his pocket watch once a year. ‘Professor, yesterday’s lecture began seven hours late,’ one student protested. ‘On the contrary,’ the professor replied, ‘it began five hours early!’ Cue laughter. Actually, the young German teacher laughed, but the rest of the school treated me to a stony silence.

  At last the second hand reached twelve, and we began the count-up again, 1,2,3 . . . 8,9,10. ‘How long was that?’ I asked once again.

  ‘Er, it got to the number four,’ Tracy replied, nonplussed. I felt quite sorry for her, shamed in front of her smirking peers. I wondered whether the second hand really was missing on her watch, or whether she’d never quite mastered the intricacies of telling the time.

  ‘That’ll make it twenty seconds for ten swings, so how much per swing?’ I asked, gently.

  ‘Two seconds,’ she answered, proving she wasn’t that bad at maths after all. Deciding not to push my luck, I got the ever-helpful deputy head to do the rest of the equation, that the acceleration due to gravity was equal to four times pi squared, times the length of the pendulum, which was conveniently one metre, divided by the time of swing squared. I’d tipped him off beforehand.

  ‘That will be four times twenty-two, divided by seven, times twenty-two, divided by seven times one, divided by four which makes –’ a short pause for dramatic effect – ‘nine point eight seven,’ he concluded, with the broadest of grins.

  There was the hugest gasp as 350 unsuspecting pupils thought we had a Stephen Hawking in our midst. I had just raised that deputy’s street cred sky high.

  ‘It’s about ten then,’ I quickly added. ‘For every second you fall, you go ten metres per second faster because of gravity. Ever since I was your age,’ kids must get fed up by old gits going on about when they were their age, ‘I’ve been totally amazed that simple stuff like a watch, a piece of string, a weight and a bit of maths puts you in touch with something as massive and universal as the invisible force due to gravity. I now spend my life wondering about how other simple stuff can put us in touch with the invisible force we call God.’ Point made, leave it there, don’t waffle on any more. If youngsters connect, they’ll connect; if not, don’t let your message die the death of a thousand qualifications.

  The Head then harangued the pupils for using too many paper towels, a typical obsession in whatever school I ended up in. I whipped up my audience to a frenzy over eternal stuff; headteachers brought them down to earth with paper towels. Notwithstanding the pressure on the school budget brought about by excessive paper towel use, the Head invited me to stay for a cuppa. I guess my dog collar unnerved his secretary, because as she carried in our tray of tea to his office, she flung the door open with great force; it hit a filing cabinet and bounced back, knocking the tray from her hand and sending hot tea flying all over the place.

  ‘You seem very enthusiastic, this morning, Diane,’ the Head joked, rushing out and coming back with his arms full of paper towels, which he used to wipe down the splattered door and walls.

  Once things had calmed down, we chatted happily. The main wall of his room was packed with row upon row of coloured cards, now splattered with specks of tea, each bearing a child’s name.

  ‘They’re year nine GCSE options,’ he explained. ‘I like to keep track of every subject each child is doing, where they are, whenever, and follow them through year ten and year eleven.’

  I reminded myself that years nine, ten and eleven were the third, fourth and fifth form in old money, just like I was always reminding myself that 17½p was 3s.6d and 500 grams were just over a 1lb.

  ‘Goodness, that’s so impressive. But do you mind if we take an example? For instance, what’s my assembly volunteer, Tracy, doing at the moment?’ I asked, testing the system. I had come across this sort of stuff before, brilliant in theory, but with no actual application when it came to the crunch.

  ‘She’s in maths at the moment, but you’ll have realized she struggles a bit, borderline level three or level four. We’ve got the former head of PE to help her along. He’s a no-nonsense sort of guy, no agonizing over why you do this or do that, he just tells them how to do it and gets on with it. He’s had fantastic results with low achievers.’

  I was so impressed. He talked for over an hour about the pupils, naming each one and describing what they were up to, what he thought they were capable of, what opportunities they had missed, who had let them down, who had enabled them to flourish. I had worked in over thirty schools and never come across care that was so meticulous, costly and time-consuming. John’s Gospel talks about a good shepherd truly knowing his sheep; I realized I had the best of shepherds before me, the fiercest of exteriors but with the tenderest of hearts.

  No hares crossed my path on my cycle ride back to Helmsley. But just before the Harome crossing I spotted a dead pheasant on the verge – recent roadkill. It was a male, its plumage a positive kaleidoscope of autumnal hues. I picked him up and clipped him to the back of my bike: he would make a tasty tea.

  ‘I see you’ve been poaching, Vicar,’ Bernard shouted across to me as I cycled into Helmsley. ‘Don’t bother plucking the wings, it’ll take you ages and there’s no’ but a scrap of meat on them. Just nip them off at the breast with a pair o’ pliers!’

  Bernard was married to Enid, my doughty churchwarden who was typically sage and calm and very rooted in the area; she’d grown up in Rievaulx, playing with her sisters amidst the Abbey ruins as a little girl. She and Bernard had a cottage on the edge of the town – a smallholding where they kept a few sheep, along with chickens and ducks and the odd goat. Our three girls had stayed with them overnight when we’d moved in to Helmsley, and had slept the sleep of their lives on three ancient feather beds. They had woken early, because various women who also kept small flocks of sheep kept ringing Bernard for advice. Terms like ‘blowfly strike’, ‘copper deficiency’, ‘liver fluke’, ‘pulpy kidney’ and ‘staggers’ wafted up the stairs, making the girls think they had been transported to a parallel universe. I had come across quite a few like Bernard and Enid in my time at Aughton, and again at Monk Fryston; scratch farmers who eked out a living, and often a good living at that, from their smallholding. They also helped other farmers, or those trying their hand at farming, with trusted advice or just an extra pair of hands at harvest, and were paid in kind. Despite the lack of job security, their kitchen tables invariably groaned under the weight of cakes galore, and there was always some stew simmering in their Yorkshire range, exuding the most seductive aroma.

  Arriving back to Canons Garth, I decided there was no time like the present, so began plucking the pheasant in our back yard. I competed with Rachel, who had washed all the sheets whilst I had been at school and was hanging them out to dry. In my enthusiasm, the odd feather strayed onto the odd wet sheet, but it was easy to pull off and hardly left a stain, so I couldn’t understand why Rachel was making such a fuss. I’d cleared about a square inch of feathers from the breast when I paused.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Rachel asked, noticing the feather production factory had ground to a halt.

  ‘I’m just amazed by how warm this bird is,’ I said. ‘It must be a couple of hours since it was knocked down, but its breast is still hot. I
n fact, it seems to be getting hotter rather than colder.’

  ‘You’d be getting hotter rather than colder if some mad vicar started pulling all the hairs on your chest out!’ Rachel laughed.

  At that moment there was a huge squawk – the pheasant was very much alive. In my panic I threw the thing into the air, where it flew into white sheet after white sheet, leaving its calling card on each and every one – a pungent yellow-brown liquid dribbling down Rachel’s pristine washing. Having completed its dirty-sheet protest, and having made itself considerably lighter in the process, it gained enough lift to clear the stone wall of the churchyard, and took refuge in the lower boughs of a convenient yew, still squawking loudly at me for inflicting such indignity upon it.

  ‘Just look at my washing,’ Rachel cried, ‘I’ll have to soak those sheets for ages to get those terrible stains out.’

  ‘Oh, I’m really sorry, love. And I can’t even offer you a delicious tea in compensation, since the bird seems to have truly flown.’ I tried to look sympathetic, but then I began to laugh. To start with it was just the odd suppressed giggle, but in seconds it turned into snorts and pealing gales of laughter. ‘I really am sorry,’ I repeated, all too aware that Rachel was giving me the most thundery of looks. ‘I’m just imagining what would have happened if – ha ha ha – I’d taken Bernard’s advice and nipped the wings off with a pair of pliers first. We’d have been chasing – ha ha ha – the thing around the yard with it squawking and spurting jets of blood – ha ha ha – over everything!’