Road to the Dales

by Gervase Phinn

  ‘Really,’ he said with a bemused smile.

  ‘I do have another decoration,’ I informed him seriously, ‘but I felt it a little pretentious to wear it.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Cycling Proficiency,’ I said.

  ‘I guess we are in for an amusing evening,’ said my colleague.

  In the year 2004 an Honorary Doctor of Letters was conferred upon me by Leicester University. The ceremony was in Lincoln Cathedral, and, prior to all the graduands ascending the platform to receive their degrees, I was presented with my award and asked to say a few words. I told the assembly that I was greatly honoured, that I only wished my parents could have been there that afternoon to see me receive such an accolade and to celebrate my success. I told them I was an average scholar who tried my best and worked hard and that there are many, many children in schools, like me, described as average but with parents and teachers who believe in them, encourage them to aim for the moon and delight in their success. With this kind of support, I told them, young people can achieve something in life. I described my own early schooling and mentioned my wonderful parents, dedicated teachers and the little girl who sat at the top of the top table. ‘For those exceptionally bright children,’ I told the congregation, ‘it must be hard for them to understand why other children aren’t as quick on the uptake. Some of us have to work hard and persevere but we can get there in the end.’ I then mentioned Susan Barlow, the bright little girl who was top of the top table and no doubt went on to great academic success. Following the degree ceremony, I progressed down the aisle of the hall to the thunderous strains of the organ. At the door a small, crimson-gowned figure turned to face me.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Hello,’ I replied smiling. ‘Have we met?’

  She returned the smile. ‘I’m the little girl who sat at the top of the top table,’ she said. ‘I’m Susan Barlow.’

  It was such a pleasure to meet her again after so many years. She had – which came as no surprise to me – gone into academia and was a professor at the university.

  One memory of Broom Valley Infants that stays in my mind is when Miss Greenhalgh organized Book Day. All the children were to come dressed as characters from books, and along Broom Valley Road that morning could be seen Peter Pan, Paddington Bear, Noddy, Pooh Bear, Heidi, the Wicked Witch of the West, Snow White, Pinocchio, Humpty Dumpty, Long John Silver and a host of other characters from fiction.

  My sister, Christine, made me the most magnificent red and yellow outfit from crêpe paper for this fancy dress event. I went as the Pied Piper of Hamelin and set off for school with her in my colourful doublet and little red and yellow hat, clutching a recorder. People on the top deck of the bus craned their necks to get a view of the little figure that strutted along, passers-by stared and then smiled, and old ladies peered through the curtains. I felt the centre of attention and so proud. Halfway there, the sky opened and the rain fell as thick as umbrella spokes. In seconds the crisp crêpe paper turned into one soggy, orange mess and I arrived at school soaked to the skin and sobbing uncontrollably. Miss Greenhalgh took charge immediately and I was dried and given a clean pair of shorts and a yellow T-shirt to wear. By this time, my great heaving sobs had become a pathetic sniffle and snuffle, but when I saw myself in the mirror I returned to the howling. The dye from the red and yellow crêpe paper had run, and looking back at me in the mirror was a small boy with brilliant orange streaks down his face, arms, hands and legs. Miss Greenhalgh calmed me down, gave me a cuddle and ushered me into the hall where all the other children were waiting in their colourful costumes. I remember their smirks and grins and the whispering and giggling and felt desolate.

  ‘Who’s he come as, miss?’ one of the children asked.

  ‘Well, can’t you tell, Susan Johnson?’ Miss Greenhalgh said with exaggerated surprise in her voice, while putting her arm protectively around my shoulder. ‘He’s come as the Gingerbread Man. Fancy you not knowing that.’

  I returned to Broom Valley Infants just before the Christmas of 1985. I had been asked by Miss Greenhalgh, now Mrs Ross and the deputy headteacher, to play Father Christmas, as the caretaker, who usually took the role, was in Moorgate Hospital. What could I say? I will let Mrs Ross take up the story:

  And of course I remember too a certain Father Christmas who arrived in brown shoes and, when told by the Deputy Head (me) that Father Christmas didn’t wear brown shoes, he promptly removed shoes and socks and walked into the hall in bare feet. He then told a wonderful story about Rudolph and his antics, giving a very plausible explanation of his lack of footwear. The sceptics amongst the children then became believers!

  That is not quite how I remember the visit. As I recall I donned the costume and after a strong cup of coffee entered the hall to find row upon row of open-mouthed, wide-eyed children. They squealed in delight when they saw the familiar red coat and white cotton-wool beard. Everything went well until a bright little spark announced loudly, ‘You’re not real, you know.’

  ‘Oh yes, I am!’ I replied in a deep, jolly Father Christmas voice.

  ‘Oh no, you’re not,’ she persisted, ‘your beard’s held on by elastic. I can see it. And Father Christmas has big boots. You’re not wearing boots. You’ve got bare feet.’

  ‘Ah, well, I got stuck in a snowdrift on my way here and my boots were so filled up with snow that I had to take them off to dry them.’

  ‘Well, where are they then?’ asked a child.

  ‘The school caretaker is drying them out in front of his fire.’

  ‘He hasn’t got a fire,’ piped up another child. ‘It’s smokeless on the estate.’

  ‘Well, on his pipes then.’

  ‘You’re not the real Father Christmas!’ continued the first child, obstinately shaking her little head.

  ‘Oh yes, I am!’ I said in my loud, jolly voice, and heard a whole school hall shout back: ‘Oh no, you’re not!’

  Mrs Ross intervened and bailed me out by starting the singing. After three verses of ‘Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer’ each child came forward to receive a small present.

  ‘What are the names of your reindeers?’ asked a little boy.

  ‘Well, there’s Rudolf,’ I started, ‘and Donner and Blitzen and er … er …’

  The deputy headteacher, seeing that I was struggling, helped me out again by explaining that Father Christmas was rather deaf.

  ‘Some of the snow from the snowdrift is still in his ears,’ she said.

  One child asked me if I knew her name and when I replied that I did not, looked crestfallen. ‘But I thought Father Christmas knows all the boys’ and girls’ names?’

  Mrs Ross explained that Father Christmas’s eyes weren’t too good either and he had such a lot of letters to read.

  One rather grubby little scrap asked if she could sit on my knee.

  ‘No, Chelsea,’ said the deputy headteacher firmly. ‘I don’t think –’ She was too late; the child had clambered up and clung to me like a little monkey.

  ‘Come on down, Chelsea,’ said Mrs Ross. ‘I don’t think Father Christmas wants children on his knee. He’s got a poorly leg.’ Any more ailments, I thought, and I would be joining the caretaker in the Moorgate Hospital.

  ‘Now, you be a very good little girl and sit on the floor, Chelsea,’ I said in my jolly voice, ‘otherwise all the other children will want to climb up.’ Chelsea stayed put and held fast like a limpet. I chuckled uneasily until the child’s teacher managed to prise her off. Mrs Ross shrugged and looked knowingly at the teachers standing around the hall.

  After the children had sung me out to ‘Jingle Bells’ I was invited into the staffroom. It was extremely hot under the red suit.

  ‘Father Christmas, you were a great hit,’ said the deputy headteacher. The staff looked on and nodded. ‘And we’d like to give you a little Christmas gift.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘it really isn’t necessary.’

  ‘Oh, but it is necessary,’ i
nsisted Mrs Ross, and presented me with a small bottle wrapped in bright Christmas paper.

  I shook my gift and held it to my ear. ‘After-shave?’ I enquired. ‘Is it after-shave?’

  ‘No, Father Christmas,’ the staff replied.

  ‘Is it a little bottle of whisky?’

  ‘No, Father Christmas,’ they chorused.

  I tore off the wrapping to reveal a small brown bottle of medication. The label read: ‘For infestation of the head.’

  ‘Chelsea’s just got over head lice,’ said the headteacher. ‘It’s not advisable to be too close to her for the time being.’

  ‘And she’s just recovered from scabies,’ piped up a beaming teacher. The rest of the staff then joined in with a hearty, ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’

  My Miss Greenhalgh came to see me on stage in Rotherham. I shall treasure the note she wrote to me after the show:

  My philosophy on children was that I wouldn’t want them to be all alike but if you can dig deep enough there is always a redeeming feature to be found somewhere and they all deserve encouragement. I think some of the adverse comments I received as a child at school made me determined never to do that to children and I am pretty sure I never did. The experience of being told by one of my teachers that I was not good at all at her subject had a lasting impact; it helped me to become a better teacher.

  I have to say Gervase you were a lovely little boy, very good-looking, very quiet, very neat. I always had a feeling that you were a thinker but didn’t always do yourself justice. No, you weren’t on the top table but you were a bright lad and you’ve proved me right.

  16

  Growing up I never thought of myself as being ‘a bright lad’. In fact I felt rather in the shadow of my talented sister and brothers. Unlike them, very little came to me naturally – it needed application. Christine, the eldest, was the intelligent one in the family and passed her scholarship examination with flying colours to attend Notre Dame Convent High School in Sheffield.

  Notre Dame (so my parents explained to anyone who would listen) was considered the best state grammar school in the area. Mum and Dad were very proud when my sister was offered a place.

  ‘She’s passed for the convent,’ my mother bragged to Mrs Evans over the garden wall, the very morning she received the letter from Sister Monica, the headmistress, with the good news.

  ‘A convent!’ exclaimed our neighbour. ‘Is she becoming a nun then?’

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ my mother told her. ‘It’s just a school. Well, not just any school. It has the best reputation in South Yorkshire.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to be a nun,’ said Mrs Evans, pinning another pair of large blue bloomers on the line. ‘I’d find their habits very restricting.’

  It wasn’t just Roman Catholic girls who attended the convent. Well-to-do Protestant parents from Fulwood, Broomhill and other affluent areas of Sheffield happily paid the fees for their daughters to attend, certain in the knowledge that their girls would emerge educated, well-mannered, cultured and courteous and not be distracted in their academic endeavours by pubescent boys. Little did these parents know that often, once on the bus into the city, the ties, gloves and hats of the sixth-formers were stuffed into satchels, the white ankle socks were replaced with nylon stockings and lipstick and mascara were applied before the boys from De La Salle College boarded the bus.

  I was in my last year at junior school when I visited Notre Dame Convent. My sister Christine was the Deputy Head Girl by then and was in the sixth form, and she informed me casually one morning, while I was playing with my lead soldiers in the wooden fort that my father had made for me, that I had been invited with her for tea the following Saturday by the headmistress.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ I told her, arranging my archers along the castle walls.

  ‘Well, you’re going,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you are!’ she exclaimed. ‘Nobody argues with Sister Monica, and if she’s asked you to go for tea with her, then you are going.’

  ‘She’s not my headteacher. She can’t order me about,’ I said peevishly. ‘Anyway, I don’t like nuns.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You’ve never met one.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like the look of them. They look like penguins.’

  ‘Well, you are coming with me,’ said Christine. ‘I have to go and you’re coming with me.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Not!’

  ‘Mum says you have to.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going!’

  Christine tried a different tack. ‘Please.’

  ‘Why does she want me to go anyway?’ I asked. ‘I’m not going to a girls’ convent when I leave junior school!’

  ‘Sister Monica often asks the brothers and sisters of the prefects in the school for tea,’ my sister explained. ‘It’s a custom. So you really have to go.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to go.’

  ‘If you do,’ Christine said, ‘I’ll buy you that little brass cannon for your fort, the one that fires matchsticks.’

  I had wanted that cannon for weeks. I had seen it in Coopers’ toy shop on Doncaster Road. The bribe was too much to resist.

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘but I want the cannon.’

  ‘And you have to be really, really good and polite and don’t eat with your mouth open and you must say, “Thank you, Sister,” and “Please, Sister,” and remember to blow your nose and not yawn or fidget or speak unless you are spoken to.’ It sounded a real ordeal, I thought, but it was worth it to get the cannon.

  Before setting off for the convent I was washed, scrubbed, combed, brushed and dressed in my Sunday best. Then I was given a final warning from Christine: ‘And remember, be on your best behaviour – or no cannon.’

  Notre Dame Convent on Cavendish Street in Sheffield was a dark, forbidding building with small mean windows crisscrossed with thin iron bars. The entrance hall was cool and quiet and smelt of lavender floor polish and old wood. In the alcoves there were large, coloured plaster statues of saints with downcast eyes, a gentle-faced virgin with long thin white hands holding a lily and standing on a snake, and a figure of Jesus with a sad expression, touching his exposed vivid red heart. Placed high up on the far wall hung a huge dominating black cross with the contorted figure of Christ, staring down wide-eyed.

  We were met by a large fussy nun called Sister Agnes, who showed us into a small spartan room with a plain wooden table and four hard-backed chairs. In the corner was a statue of a nun with a halo, a great black wimple and a huge white collar. She was a stout, homely-looking woman with a round cheery face and held a book on her lap. She didn’t look like my idea of a nun at all.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s Blessed Julie Billiart,’ Christine told me.

  ‘Julia Billiards?’ I said. ‘It doesn’t sound like the name of a nun to me.’

  ‘Julie Billiart!’ my sister snapped. ‘She’s the foundress of the Sisters of Notre Dame of Namur.’

  I blew out my breath noisily. I could tell that this was going to be a prolonged and unpleasant experience, but I thought of my little brass cannon. ‘I don’t like it here,’ I said, shivering theatrically. ‘It’s really, really spooky.’

  ‘Don’t be silly!’ snapped Christine. I could see she was as nervous as I.

  ‘I bet it’s full of the ghosts of dead nuns walking the corridors moaning and groaning.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘It’s worse than the dentist’s,’ I whispered.

  ‘Be quiet, I can hear her coming.’ I strained my ears but couldn’t hear anything.

  The door creaked open and Sister Monica swept through as if on oiled castors. She smiled a small thin-lipped smile. With her long black cloak and hood, sharp beak of a nose and small black glittery eyes, she reminded me of a blackbird. I almost expected her to trill when she opened her mouth. We stood up.

  ‘Christine,’ she said in a
hushed voice. ‘How very nice to see you. Thank you for coming.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Sister.’

  She stared at me thoughtfully, like a customer considering a purchase. ‘And this must be your young brother, Gervase.’ She held out a long white hand and I touched it nervously. Her hand was as soft and cold as snow. ‘And how are you, young man?’

  ‘I’m very well, thank you, Sister,’ I replied politely. I could feel myself beginning to tremble.

  ‘Do sit down,’ said the nun quietly. ‘We shall be having tea a little later. I hope you are hungry. I’m sure you are. Boys are always hungry, aren’t they?’ How would she know, I thought. I don’t suppose she sees all that many boys. ‘Sister Mary Francis has been very busy in the kitchen.’

  Sister Mary Francis couldn’t have been all that busy in the kitchen because when the tea arrived it was little more than a plate of cold meat and salad. The thin slice of anaemic ham had a halo of fat around it, the leaf of lettuce looked as if it had been left in the sun all day and the half tomato looked as if someone had trodden on it.

  ‘For this bounty, O Lord,’ said Sister Monica, ‘make us truly thankful and help us always to remember those who are less fortunate than ourselves who have little to eat. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ I repeated, thinking that those less fortunate were welcome to this food.

  ‘Do start,’ said Sister Monica, lifting up her knife and fork and giving the thin-lipped smile. She cut the meat into tiny squares and posted them carefully into her small mouth.