04 Village Teacher

by Jack Sheffield

  They observed with varying degrees of emotion. The two young women seemed to take it in their stride. However, the young man suddenly found himself in a nightmare world of starched caps, white wellies, red rubber aprons and pregnant women with their legs in stirrups. By the time the midwife used a hook to break the waters he was having second thoughts about his choice of career.

  Suddenly, the pace of events increased.

  By now Sally had begun to scream so loudly the walls rattled. Also, much to Colin’s dismay, she yelled that if he even considered trying for another baby she would personally castrate him with his new mole-grip pliers.

  ‘You tell ’im, luv,’ muttered one of the female trainee midwives.

  ‘Use this, Sally,’ said the midwife. ‘Gas and air – it’ll help.’ Two cylinders were fixed on a trolley alongside the bed. Sally held the black rubber mask to her face and breathed the welcome gas in.

  Colin had gone grey, then green, and was now chewing the inside of his face mask.

  ‘The head’s out …’ said the midwife. ‘The shoulders are out …’ Colin slipped gently on to the floor. ‘And the husband’s out!’

  This was followed by the cries of the two female trainee midwives. They were supporting their male colleague under his armpits and dragging him out of the room. He had fainted as well.

  ‘Men!’ muttered the midwife as she proceeded calmly.

  She was a large, experienced, formidable woman with hands like coal shovels but with the dexterity of a seamstress. After cutting the umbilical cord and checking the baby’s breathing, everything seemed well. The child was wrapped in a green cloth and given to Sally.

  The midwife’s demeanour softened for a brief moment and she smiled. ‘Sally,’ she said softly, ‘you have a beautiful baby girl.’

  What happened next was a blur to Sally. She simply felt so tired. From the delivery room, she soon found herself in a ward with other mothers and their babies.

  Baby Pringle reappeared, washed clean and wearing a small white nightie open at the back and a terry-towelling nappy held together with a large safety pin. She was so tiny, a little bundle of humanity on a cellular blanket in what looked like a Perspex fish tank. The pink tags on her wrist and ankle announced that she weighed seven pounds and one ounce and that she had been born at 4.00 a.m. on 3 February 1981.

  Sally looked at Colin, who was now recovered. ‘We have a daughter,’ she said.

  Colin was about to add, ‘With ginger hair,’ but thought better of it. After all, he was a New Age Eighties-man and he knew he had to be sensitive.

  On Tuesday morning a monochrome world of winter stretched out before me. A tracery of silver frost rimed every twig on the still, frozen trees, while rooks and starlings settled on the parallel shadows in the distant ploughed fields. However, in the far corner of my garden, aconites and snowdrops lifted the spirit and gave hope of warmer days to come.

  I was further cheered to see nine-year-old Debbie Clack carrying a large armful of furry willow catkins for Valerie Flint’s nature table. Her mother, Mrs Cynthia Clack, was hurrying up the drive with her and I remembered I had asked her to call in to see me.

  ‘It was about your Debbie’s PE kit, Mrs Clack,’ I said in the school entrance hall.

  ‘ ’E’s ’opeless, is my Charlie, Mr Sheffield,’ said Mrs Clack as she rummaged in her shopping bag. ‘Anyway, ’ere’s some PE kit for our Debbie. Ah went to t’Co-op.’

  ‘Well, I’m really pleased, Mrs Clack. Debbie loves the netball lessons with Mrs Hunter and I was a bit concerned when I received this note from your husband.’ I took it from my pocket. It read: ‘Please excuse our Debbie from netball but we can’t afford the PE kit.’ I gave her the scruffy piece of paper. ‘And it didn’t help that it’s been written on the back of a betting slip, Mrs Clack.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, Mr Sheffield,’ said the determined Mrs Clack, ‘ah’ll give ’im what-for when ’e comes home.’

  At that moment, and blissfully unaware that he wouldn’t be getting his usual Tuesday night pie, chips and mushy peas followed by jam roly-poly pudding and custard, Charlie Clack, Ragley’s finest car salesman, was in full flow with a browbeaten bank clerk in the Ford garage in Easington.

  ‘This is Britain’s best-selling small car,’ recited Charlie, ‘the fantastic Ford Escort that goes from thirty to fifty in eleven-point-three seconds, an’ wi’ its thirteen ’undred engine, square headlights, matt-black grill an’ ’ound-stooth up’olstry, y’looking at t’car of the Eighties.’ Charlie gave his customer a glassy-eyed stare of holier-than-thou sincerity while at the back of his mind he was desperate to know the result of the three-thirty from Market Rasen.

  I walked with Mrs Clack to the main entrance door and opened it for her. As she stepped out into the frozen world, she shook her head and growled at the mothers sheltering under the porch, ‘Men … who needs ’em?’ and all the mothers nodded vigorously in agreement.

  I stepped back in alarm. Above my head the spikes of silver icicles hung from the porch like shark’s teeth and I made a mental note never to get on the wrong side of Mrs Clack.

  * * *

  Suddenly the office telephone rang and Vera seemed to be asking a barrage of questions. ‘Thank you, Colin, and congratulations. Send Sally our love and we’ll visit tomorrow evening.’

  Ruby was polishing the handle of the office door and had heard every word. ‘It’s a girl,’ she shouted to me, ‘Mrs Pringle’s ’ad a baby girl,’ and she dashed off to tell Shirley and Doreen in the kitchen and then Anne, Jo and Valerie.

  We all gathered in the office and Vera gave us chapter and verse of the night’s events.

  Throughout the day it dominated our conversations and, eventually, at the end of school Ruby came into my classroom and began to sweep the floor.

  ‘Good news about Mrs Pringle, Mr Sheffield,’ said Ruby, leaning on her broom.

  ‘Wonderful news, Ruby,’ I said, looking up from my marking.

  ‘Teks m’back t’me an’ Ronnie,’ said Ruby with a faraway look in her eyes. ‘Ah were proper smitten with ’im, Mr Sheffield. Ah thought ’e were real ’andsome. Then ah fell for a baby an’ that were that.’

  ‘How did you meet Ronnie?’ I asked.

  ‘It were m’sister, Rose, Mr Sheffield. She introduced me to ’im.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a sister, Ruby,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, Mr Sheffield. Lovely lass, is our Rose. She ’as a knicker stall on Thirkby market, an’ ’er ’ouse is allus spotless wi’ lovely crisp sheets an’ them nice toiletries what she pinches out o’ ’otels.’

  ‘Sounds a lovely lady,’ I said.

  ‘Y’reight there, Mr Sheffield,’ said Ruby and wandered off into the corridor, assuming she had finished sweeping my classroom floor, which, of course, she hadn’t.

  Meanwhile, by Wednesday lunchtime Sally was learning how to breast-feed.

  Dr Davenport had called in to check the stitches and he was followed by ‘Booby-Sue’, the resident expert.

  ‘What Booby-Sue doesn’t know about breast-feeding isn’t worth knowing,’ said Matron. She was correct.

  Gradually, Sally learnt to alternate, left then right.

  Back in the Ragley staff-room, a strange sight met my eyes. Dan Hunter was stretched out on the carpet with his legs in the air, while Jo was shaking his trouser leg as if her life depended on it.

  ‘Sorry, Jack,’ said Dan, looking up at me and clearly very embarrassed. ‘I just called in and I know this looks odd … but needs must, as they say.’

  ‘I’ll come back later,’ I said, hurrying to close the door.

  ‘No, Jack,’ explained Jo, very red in the face, ‘it’s really quite simple. We need money to buy a present for Sally’s baby and it’s too late for either of us to go to the bank. There’s some change in Dan’s truncheon pocket and the only way to get it out is through gravity!’

  With a final shake, fifty-pence pieces and other small coins began to trickle out one by one from th
e long, narrow pocket.

  ‘Spare a copper?’ said Anne, who had arrived at that moment and seemed completely undeterred by the demonstration of police gymnastics.

  Shortly before visiting time we all descended on the hospital waiting room. I was clutching a bag of grapes and Beth had wrapped up a beautiful Babygro outfit in white tissue paper. Vera was showing Anne Grainger a little white cardigan she had knitted; Dan Hunter, rather self-consciously, was holding a soft toy bunny rabbit and Jo was taking the price tag off a plastic changing mat. Ruby had crocheted some tiny bootees and adorned them with pink ribbons, while Valerie had a large envelope containing a voucher for baby clothes.

  From where we sat, we were able to hear an interesting conversation in the ward beyond. A lively five-year-old girl, holding her grandmother’s hand, walked confidently up to her mother’s bed and sat down. Looking at her grandmother’s lined face, in a loud voice, she asked, ‘How old are you, Grandma?’

  ‘I’m too old to remember,’ she replied.

  ‘Well, Grandma, if you can’t remember, all you have to do is look in the back of your pants. Mine say five to six.’ She nodded sagely, then turned to her mother. ‘Mummy, if you’re very good will the nurses let you bring him home?’ she asked.

  A nurse pulled shut a curtain around the bed, but we could hear the continuing conversation.

  ‘Yes, darling. This is your brother and he’ll be coming to live with us.’

  There was a pause. Then, ‘What’s Mummy doing now, Grandma?’ asked the little girl.

  ‘She’s feeding your baby brother with milk,’ said her grandmother gently.

  ‘Yesterday Mummy was feeding him with the other one.’

  ‘Yes … Your mummy can choose which one,’ came the cautious reply.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said the little girl. ‘So is one for hot milk and the other for cold milk?’

  It was a happy group that took turns to see Sally and her baby, who, surprisingly, hadn’t got a name yet. Eventually, after much cooing, examining fingers and toes and agreeing there is nothing softer than a baby’s skin, we drove home. Occasionally, I glanced across at Beth and wondered if she was thinking the same.

  After the regulation ten days in hospital, Sally was allowed to leave. Colin parked the car outside the entrance and helped her down the steps and into the back seat. Meanwhile, a self-assured nurse followed with the baby, warmly dressed in a Babygro outfit with press-studs, a white shawl wrapped over her head, and passed her to Sally. The tiny girl had a name now, a beautiful name: it was Grace.

  As they turned on to the A19 and drove out of York, Colin looked anxious and sucked a humbug furiously.

  ‘Are you all right, Colin?’ asked Sally.

  ‘Sort of,’ mumbled Colin.

  ‘What is it?’ Sally asked firmly.

  ‘Well, you know the washing machine …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve done some washing.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘And I’ve read the instructions,’ he said with an air of desperation. ‘In fact, quite a few times.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I can’t seem to be able to open the door to get it out.’

  ‘How long has the washing been in there?’ asked Sally evenly, trying not to hyperventilate.

  ‘Five days,’ said Colin forlornly.

  Sally said nothing.

  That was the problem with men, she thought. They were, well, just men.

  Chapter Twelve

  Beauty and the Blacksmith

  School closed today for the one-week half-term holiday with 88 children registered on roll. The hinges are broken on the main entrance door and Miss Evans arranged for repairs to be completed while school is closed.

  Extract from the Ragley School Logbook:

  Friday, 20 February 1981

  ‘NO ONE DOES fleur-de-lis like Virgil,’ said Vera knowingly.

  Ruby looked puzzled. She thought Fleur-de-Lis was a French film star. Nevertheless, ‘Lovely man is Virgil,’ she said, polishing the handle of the staff-room door, her usual task when listening in to our conversations. ‘ ’E mended our coal scuttle las’ week.’

  ‘He’s certainly a craftsman,’ said Valerie Flint, blowing on the surface of her boiling-hot milky coffee and lowering herself gently into a chair. ‘I heard that he’s done work for York Minster.’

  Jo looked up from her Nuffield Book of Environmental Studies. ‘I pass his smithy on my way to school, Jack,’ she said. ‘When I drive past I usually wave and he waves back but, come to think of it, he never looks particularly happy.’ She returned to the diagram of how to make a weather station. ‘My Dan said he did a great job repairing our lawn mower,’ she added as an afterthought.

  ‘An ’e did that weathercock on t’top o’ village ’all,’ said Ruby, still polishing the door handle.

  ‘In fact your Hazel did a lovely drawing of it in her Weather project folder,’ said Jo.

  Ruby smiled in appreciation. ‘She teks after me, Mrs ’Unter. Ah allus loved art.’

  Appropriately, no one mentioned the fact that Hazel’s interpretation of our local weathercock looked more like Orville the Duck.

  It was Friday morning playtime, 20 February, and we were about to break up for the one-week half-term holiday. Our Victorian school boiler was working overtime and the ancient hot-water pipes creaked and groaned as they expanded with the sudden rush of heat. The staff-room gas fire was on full blast and we had all gathered for a welcome hot drink, with the exception of Anne, who was on playground duty. The world outside was a frozen wasteland but the rosy-cheeked children seemed impervious to the cold and were busy rolling snowballs and building snowmen. Meanwhile, the entrance hall was like an icebox as the icy draughts whistled through the gaps between the front entrance door and the cracked door frame.

  ‘The repairs to the door need to be completed as a matter of urgency, Mr Sheffield,’ said Vera insistently. A hundred years of use had taken its toll and I knew this was an important job. It was also clear that Vera wanted a decision. ‘Joseph said that the governors have sanctioned the work as long as the costs are reasonable … And there’s no problem with Virgil.’ She held up a large brown envelope. ‘He dropped this in to the vicarage last night.’ Inside, in beautiful copperplate, was the blacksmith’s handwritten estimate for a set of new cast-iron giant hinges for our huge school entrance door, plus the labour costs to rehang it.

  I made up my mind. ‘I’ll call in after school and ask him to do the job.’

  ‘You won’t be disappointed, Mr Sheffield,’ said Vera, with a satisfied smile.

  ‘I’m looking forward to meeting him,’ I said.

  ‘It’s jus’ that ’e never smiles, does ’e, Miss Evans?’ said Ruby, finally giving up the pretence of polishing the door handle.

  ‘That’s right, Ruby,’ said Vera pensively; ‘he’s not smiled for a long time.’

  She and Ruby exchanged a glance I knew so well. They knew something I didn’t.

  ‘An’ y’know who’s come back, don’t you, Miss Evans?’

  Vera nodded. ‘Yes, Ruby. I heard your Beauty was back from Australia.’

  ‘That’s reight,’ said Ruby with a shake of her head. ‘It didn’t work out, so ah ’eard.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Ruby.’

  ‘Well, ah’m not … begging y’pardon, Miss Evans.’ She gave the door handle a final polish, walked out into the corridor and pulled the door shut after her.

  I looked up at Vera, puzzled by Ruby’s final remark. ‘Beauty?’

  ‘She’s Ruby’s niece, Mr Sheffield. Lives in Thirkby … Must be in her mid-thirties now.’ Then she gave me that familiar knowing look.

  It was obvious there was a story here and I presumed that, in time, Vera would relate it to me. Little did I know it but the opportunity was destined to arrive sooner than expected.

  At the end of the school day I drove slowly up the frosty Easington Road out of Ragley to a small well-kept cottage on Chauntsing
er Lane. This was the home and workplace of Virgil Crichton, the local blacksmith, where he lived alone. As I parked on the snowy forecourt of his huge stone-built outbuilding, it occurred to me this would make a wonderful educational visit for my class. The sign above the ancient doors simply read The Forge and I stood in the darkness watching Virgil at work.

  Although he was a great bear of a man of immense strength, he was known to be quiet and gentle. He still repaired and sharpened scythes and bill-hooks but, with the modernization of farm machinery, making horse ploughs had become a forgotten art. While he missed the giant shire-horses of his childhood, he still enjoyed looking after the major’s horses, making sure they were shod to his daughter’s exacting standards.

  There was a steady pattern to Virgil’s work and his life. When the embers in his furnace were glowing fiery red, Virgil would take a ready-cut piece of metal and place it in the fierce heat and then pump the long handle of the bellows. In his massive right hand he would handle the heavy tongs and pick out a red-hot piece of iron. Finally, when it glowed like a setting sun, he would take it to the anvil and shape a perfect horseshoe.

  On this dark, winter night, under a bright light, he was kneeling on the concrete floor, battering a broken pig trough with a hammer. Business was steady for Virgil but it was also slow. Once his giant hammer had beaten out a regular rhythm. Now there was only a broken lawnmower to repair or perhaps a set of fire irons for Old Tommy Piercy. It was sad that on most days the anvil was now strangely silent. Perhaps that was why he never smiled.

  My footsteps crunched across the forecourt and Virgil looked up, took off his leather apron and extended a huge hand in greeting. I noticed his leather braces were fastened to his thick cord trousers with a couple of horse nails.

  He looked up and nodded as if he was expecting me. ‘Hello, Mr Sheffield. Good of you to drop by,’ he said and we shook hands. Like me, he was in his thirties but perhaps two or three years older. However, while we were both about the same height, he must have been four stones heavier and his huge muscular shoulders resembled those of a weightlifter. In the sharp lights of the forge, his eyes of steel-grey stared back at me, guarded and steady.