04 Village Teacher

by Jack Sheffield

  As usual, the discussion didn’t always go in the direction I had anticipated. Cathy Cathcart was waving her hand in the air. ‘Mr Sheffield,’ she said with a grin, ‘why do noses run an’ feet smell?’

  It occurred to me that, although teaching might not be well paid, at least it was interesting.

  * * *

  At lunchtime in the staff-room Anne was scanning the front page of her Yorkshire Post. ‘Hooray!’ she cried. ‘Inflation’s gone down to thirteen per cent!’ These were turbulent times in politics. The ‘Gang of Four’, Dr David Owen, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins and William Rogers, had launched the Social Democratic Party, there were real fears of a national miners’ strike and Michael Foot, Leader of the Opposition, had asked Mrs Thatcher what she intended to do.

  However, Vera and Valerie had more important things on their minds. They were poring over Delia Smith’s cookery book and discussing soup recipes for the forthcoming series of Lent lunches.

  ‘Seems early this year for pancakes,’ said Jo.

  Vera looked up. ‘Shrove Tuesday is always forty-seven days before Easter Sunday, which this year is on the nineteenth of April,’ she said with absolute certainty. The church calendar was always at Vera’s fingertips.

  Throughout the day each class went into the school hall to make their pancakes, supervised by teachers and parents. Shirley the cook described each step of the process and the day was a great success. Even though the one I made stuck to the pan and finished up looking like shredded bladderwrack, all the children were sympathetic and recognized that this was Shirley’s day. She was definitely in charge, with the reliable Ruby as her second-in-command. I wondered if there was any correlation between pancakes and personality: Ruby’s was large and fluffy, whereas Vera’s was slim, even and perfectly symmetrical.

  ‘That were a good day, Mr Sheffield,’ said Darrell Topper as everyone left at the end of the day. I smiled in acknowledgement. It wasn’t the moment to insist on correct grammar.

  Saturday morning dawned bright and fair. The recent heavy rain that had cleared away the snow had gone now and early spring sunshine lifted the spirits. On my Bush radio, at nine o’clock on Radio 2, David Jacobs faded out The Byrds singing ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ to allow the newsreader to reassure us that the recent serious flooding of the River Ouse in York was only likely to occur once in every four hundred years.

  Later, I was sitting with Beth in Nora’s Coffee Shop, eating a Wagon Wheel and drinking a frothy coffee. At the counter, Dorothy was telling the teenagers Claire Bradshaw and Anita Cuthbertson why pixie boots were every young girl’s dream. These wrinkly pull-on boots kept your feet warm and Dorothy had just bought a new pair that went up to her knees.

  Beth seemed quiet, pursing her lips and blowing on the surface of her coffee … just like Laura. She was more quiet than usual, as if something was on her mind. In the background John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ was playing softly on the juke-box.

  ‘Beth … would you like to go for a walk?’

  She smiled and picked up her scarf and gloves. ‘Good idea,’ she said, but there was a hint of sadness in her eyes.

  We walked across the High Street and up the well-worn path towards the ramshackle cricket pavilion. I swung open the five-barred gate and our footsteps crunched on the gravelled car park until we reached the grassy path alongside the white picket fence that surrounded the cricket field. Beyond the hedgerow to our left was a dense wooded area that separated the track from the football field, from which came the distant cries of children.

  I put my arm round her shoulders and we stopped next to a smart, newly varnished wooden bench next to the ancient cricket scoreboard. Screwed to the backrest of the bench was an engraved brass plaque that read, ‘In fond memory of our most faithful supporter, HERBIE BARRETT, who left this boundary in 1976 after a good innings of 86.’ We sat down and stared across the field to the woods beyond.

  Suddenly the clouds cleared as if washed by a William Turner sky and sunlight burst through the bare twigs and splashed on to the woodland floor. It was a time of new life and new beginnings. Soon the coppice of hazel, lime, ash and chestnut would send up a mass of new shoots. In among the new grass, primroses, the first ‘rose’ of spring, provided a bright carpet of colour. It was a sight to lift the spirits and I looked at Beth. She was unmoving, deep in thought.

  ‘Beth, I love living here … Don’t you?’

  She stared, unfocused, into the distance. ‘It’s fine, Jack, but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Perhaps we have different ambitions.’

  This wasn’t the answer I had expected. ‘Beth … I have hopes and dreams like any other man.’

  ‘But where do you see us in five years’ time or, say, at the end of the Eighties?’

  ‘Well, I suppose I had hoped we would live together at Bilbo Cottage. It would make a lovely home – particularly if we considered having children.’

  Beth nodded slowly but continued to stare into the distance. ‘I see,’ she said.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked softly and stroked her hand.

  She gave me a faint smile. ‘I’m fine, Jack. Don’t worry about me. It’s just the thought of our schools closing and what would happen then. It’s so unsettling.’

  ‘Beth, we’ll be fine. I’m sure it will work out.’

  She looked into my eyes as if seeing me for the first time. ‘I never thought you might want to be a village teacher all your life, Jack. I just assumed you’d move on … that we would both move on,’ she said, almost to herself.

  ‘Beth, I love you … I’ll be what you want me to be.’

  She leant over and kissed me on the lips. ‘And I love you, Jack.’

  We sat there in the chilly silence, both deep in our own thoughts, until I heard the ringing of a distant handbell.

  In Ragley High Street all eyes turned. A grey gypsy cob with a long shaggy forelock and mane clattered along, drawing a brightly painted cart. Tom Kettle, the local rag-and-bone man, was making his monthly visit to Ragley village. ‘Rag-oh-bone, rag-oh-bone,’ was the familiar cry, followed by the clip-clop of a horse’s iron-shod hoofs.

  Tom knew there would be a large crowd on this special day when the villagers of Ragley assembled on the village green for the annual pancake race. Seb Coe in the Moscow Olympics could not have enjoyed a more partisan crowd. In this little corner of North Yorkshire, Olympic gold medals came a poor second to the Ragley Pancake Day trophy. It was a small silver cup on the base of which the names of the winners of past years were inscribed. The 1981 race, due to commence at midday, was destined to be one that would go down in Ragley folklore.

  It was eleven o’clock and Tom Kettle’s faithful horse, Silver, trotted at a steady pace up the High Street and his brightly polished harness clinked with the rhythm of his hoofbeats. Tom flicked the reins more out of habit than necessity. Silver knew the routine: pull, pause and rest. Outside the village hall, Silver came to a halt next to the grassy mound at the side of the road and he bowed his head and chomped contentedly.

  Deirdre Coe was driving past in her Land-Rover on her way home to collect her frying pan and she pulled up sharply. ‘Y’want t’keep moving on. We don’t want your kind ’ere!’ she bellowed.

  Tom looked up nervously. Both Stan and Deirdre Coe had always given him a hard time. Silver gave Deirdre a baleful glare as she drove off, cursing. Unlike Tom, he didn’t mind showing his true emotions.

  Katy Ollerenshaw and Cathy Cathcart, after watching Noel Edmonds and his Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, were walking down the High Street and had observed the whole incident.

  ‘Mr Kettle,’ asked Katy politely, ‘do horses have feelings?’

  ‘My Silver,’ said Tom, ‘well, ’e knaws if tha’s a good person or a bad person.’

  ‘How does he know?’ asked Katy.

  ‘ ’E jus’ does,’ said Tom. ‘ ’Orses are clever, tha knaws.’

  ‘Mebbe ’e ’as an extra sense,’ said Cathy, reaching up and
stroking Silver’s muzzle. ‘We’ve been doin’ about senses in school.’

  Tom grinned, pulled out his trusty brass bugle, licked his dry lips, gave three sharp blasts and, for good measure, in a loud voice he shouted, ‘Any ol’ iron, any ol’ iron.’

  Tom and Silver were popular local characters. Tom was in his mid-sixties and had spoken of retirement in recent years. He wore a cloth cap, checked shirt, leather waistcoat, old thick corduroy trousers and boots with steel toe-caps.

  Silver was seventeen years old and beginning to find the strain of pulling the heavy cart a little more difficult as the years rolled by. Tom climbed down and patted his dear friend’s stocky neck, at which Silver peered round his large leather blinkers and gave Tom a knowing look, as if he was sharing the same thoughts of retirement.

  Tom was married to a travelling woman with weathered brown skin. She walked from house to house around the local villages, selling lucky heather and clothes pegs made from coppiced hazel, and if you crossed her palm with silver she would tell your fortune. They lived in a caravan next to a tumble-down stable near the old forest on the outskirts of Easington, while Silver was left to graze on a spare acre of land that nobody seemed to want. It was a quiet, lonely existence but it suited Tom and he eked out a simple living.

  His only neighbour was a strange man. Arthur Backhouse, an occasional gravedigger, who preferred to be known as Archdruid King Arthur Greatdragon. He lived alone in the next field, in a mobile caravan that he referred to as his ‘proto-druidic megalith’, and each winter equinox his fellow Druids called in for their annual party. After consuming a few giant cans of Watney’s Party Seven Draught Bitter, Arthur and his fellow revellers would dance round a blazing campfire and chant prayers for the return of sunshine.

  The highlight of the evening was Arthur drinking a yard of ale and then attempting to cry out a sacred magical call to Lugh, the Sun God. Sadly, the urgent need to be violently sick in the nearby hedgerow lessened the impact of this season-changing recitation.

  Fortunately for Arthur, however, his Druid girlfriend, Margery – a Smarties packer in the Joseph Rowntree factory – otherwise known as Airmid, the Goddess of Herb-lore, was always there to provide relief. She immediately offered Arthur a potent herbal mixture of ground ivy and mugwort from the leather pouch round her neck. However, on reflection, he decided to go for the Alka-Seltzer in his kitchen cabinet. Then, in the early hours of the morning, the Druids would make their way home, except, of course, for the Goddess of Herb-lore, who always stayed the night. So, for Arthur, his prayers were answered and the earth continued to move.

  Beth and I arrived back in the High Street as a stream of children, tugging adults behind them, gathered round the horse and cart. While the children patted Silver, their parents arrived with armfuls of old clothing and pieces of unwanted furniture. It was the flotsam of their life that Big Dave and Little Malcolm couldn’t remove in their bin wagon. In exchange, Tom would give each child a blue balloon and a length of baling twine.

  Soon a crowd of children were making their way up the High Street towards the village green with their balloons floating on the brisk breeze.

  ‘Ronnie!’ shouted Ruby. ‘Go and get that old iron bedstead from our back garden.’

  ‘M’back’s a bit painful, my luv,’ said Ronnie, more in hope than expectation.

  ‘Tell our Duggie t’give you a ’and,’ commanded Ruby, ‘an’ then our ’Azel will get a balloon.’ We watched Ronnie walk slowly back home. ‘ ’E’s a lazy so-an’-so is that one,’ said Ruby, shaking her head.

  At twelve o’clock it seemed the whole village had surrounded the village green. Dan Hunter had provided some plastic cones from the back of his police van to mark out the track and Albert Jenkins read out the strict rules to the twenty competitors who had assembled on the forecourt of The Royal Oak.

  Most had come for the fun of it and it was an incongruous group of ladies who chatted, giggled, admired each other’s pancakes and, in some cases, exchanged recipes. Petula Dudley-Palmer had made her pancake very carefully that morning. After consulting see here of her Good Housekeeping’s New Picture Cookery book she had created an impressive layered pancake filled with whipped cream and jam. The thought of flipping her creation horrified her.

  The vivacious Madame Jacqueline Laporte, the French teacher from Easington Comprehensive School, always celebrated Mardi Gras and had covered her pancake with a hot sauce of caramelized sugar, orange juice and lightly grated orange peel. The pièce de résistance was a splash of Grand Marnier. While the resulting flambéed crêpe Suzette was perhaps a little too cordon bleu for Ragley Pancake Day, it was generally agreed that the attractive French woman with the Bridget Bardot looks repeatedly produced the crème de la crème of pancakes. The watching menfolk also noted that, in her figure-hugging, pencil-slim black skirt, she would never win a pancake race in a month of dimanches.

  Deirdre Coe’s pancake looked like a fossilized cowpat. Brown and inedible, it displayed little of culinary or artistic merit. However, such was its consistency, Deirdre could flip it with unerring accuracy like a leather placemat. After practising for an hour in her brother’s cowshed she had only dropped it twice in the festering cow muck that covered the concrete floor. However, after a quick wipe with a dishcloth, it was as good as new. By the time she had arrived at the start line the local punters had her down as the marginal favourite.

  Ruby walked to the start line with her frying pan gripped in her hand. She had made her batter, fried it in a pan, sprinkled the resulting pancake with a little caster sugar, and she was ready.

  Deirdre Coe took a last puff of her cigarette and sneered at Ruby. ‘Judgement Day, y’big lump.’

  ‘Y’ll gerra clout if y’don’t shurrup!’ retorted Ruby.

  ‘Get lost, caretaker-skivvy. See you at t’finish,’ said Deirdre.

  Albert fired his starting pistol, the crowd cheered the competitors and they were off.

  After a lifetime of mopping floors Ruby had wrists like a Canadian lumberjack and she held her frying pan in a vice-like grip. With unerring accuracy she flipped her pancake every ten paces, to the satisfaction of the pancake race judge, Albert Jenkins, and by halfway round the track she had taken the lead.

  ‘C’mon, Mam,’ yelled Ruby’s daughters.

  ‘Come on, Ruby,’ shouted Joseph and Vera Evans, forgetting all sense of decorum.

  What Deirdre Coe lacked in fitness and technique she made up for with devious cunning. A nudge here, a shove there, and her rivals fell by the wayside one by one. Coming up to the last bend by the duck pond at the side of the village green there was only Ruby to beat. Ruby had hugged the inside lane and there was no way Deirdre could overtake unless she went to the outside of the track. The crowd held their breath as Deirdre made her move. It was now or never.

  As she dug her elbows into Ruby’s ample frame and, with a last desperate lunge, tried to pass her on the outside of the track, she beheld a fiercesome sight. Tom Kettle had parked his cart under the weeping-willow tree at the side of the duck pond and Silver was grazing nearby, unmoved by the noise and the charge of the pancake brigade. Unmoved, that is, until Deirdre Coe came flying by and something stirred in the cob’s memory.

  Silver stretched out his broad head towards her. His ears turned back and the whites of his eyes glared in a manic stare. With gums stretched back to reveal his tombstone teeth, he snarled and grabbed Deirdre’s pancake as she flipped it for the last time.

  ‘Hi-ho, Silver,’ yelled Deke Ramsbottom, waving his cowboy hat.

  ‘Ru-bee, Ru-bee,’ chanted the Ragley Rovers football team.

  Deirdre finished up on her backside in a muddy patch by the duck pond, while Ruby roared up the home straight like Red Rum in the Grand National.

  ‘Ruby, my luv,’ shouted Ronnie, surprisingly removing his bobble hat and throwing it in the air.

  ‘My mam’s a winner,’ shouted Hazel, clutching her blue balloon.

  Ruby was presented with the trophy
, the crowd cheered and everyone went home to eat their pancakes. It was another memorable day.

  As Tom led Silver back to his cart he whispered in his ear and patted him gently.

  Cathy Cathcart tugged my sleeve. ‘You can tell he loves his horse, can’t you, Mr Sheffield? It’s like when my mam tucks me in at night.’

  ‘You’re right, Cathy,’ I said.

  ‘P’raps it’s another one o’ them senses …’ called Cathy as she disappeared into the crowd.

  Perhaps it was.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A Boy and a Kite

  A ‘Reading Workshop’ will commence next Monday in the school hall at ten o’clock. A letter went out inviting parents, grandparents and friends to support the scheme aimed at promoting reading throughout the school.

  Extract from the Ragley School Logbook:

  Friday, 27 March 1981

  THE CURTAINS WERE closed; they always were.

  Violet Tinkle sat in her high-backed armchair, fingered her string of pearls and stared blankly at the flickering beams of light that pierced the gap between the heavy velvet curtains.

  She was seventy-one years old and a resident of the Hartford Home for Retired Gentlefolk, an imposing red-brick Victorian building that hid behind a tall yew hedge set back in two acres of private land beyond the Ragley cricket pitch. It had once been a military hospital during World War Two where soldiers, sailors and airmen had their tired and broken bodies nursed back to health.

  Outside her window the late March wind was strengthening. It rattled the grey roof slates and shook the tall chimneypots. Suddenly a strong gust blew back the curtains and – through the glass doors, beyond the balcony – Violet saw something that would change her life. It was a boy and a kite.