Road to the Dales

by Gervase Phinn

  In my scenes my eyes were increasingly drawn to the students in the first two rows, with their books on their knees. All I saw was the top of their heads. The scene where Malvolio is awakened by the carousing of the outrageous drunken Sir Toby Belch and his friends is one of the play’s highlights. That evening I entered in a long nightgown and cap with my chain of office around my neck and I railed at the revellers:

  My masters, are you mad? Or what are you? Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to make an alehouse of my lady’s house … ?

  The student playing Sir Toby was a seasoned and very talented actor. He spluttered and spat and staggered drunkenly across the stage. Finally he thrust his face into mine and swung the heavy metal chain around my neck with the words:

  Go, sir, rub your chain with crumbs.

  The sharp points on the chain cut into my flesh and I exclaimed, ‘Bloody hell.’ There was a deal of consternation on the front two rows when, try as they might, the students following in the text tried to locate the words. This was followed by frantic whispering.

  On the next night, with three strips of Elastoplast around my neck, I was not chancing another cut throat, so I divested myself of the chain just before my entrance. When it came to the famous line there was, of course, no chain for me to rub with crumbs. With remarkable aplomb Sir Toby told me:

  Prithee good sir, go taketh a running jump!

  It was fortunate that there were no students in the audience that night, following his lines in their books.

  Those productions with the South Yorkshire Theatre for Youth were memorable and were the start of a long career in amateur theatre. I went on to act at college, at the schools in which I taught and with various local drama groups. I was Duncan in Macbeth, Chitterlow in Half a Sixpence, Mr Brown-low in Oliver!, Hobson in Hobson’s Choice, the SS Lieutenant in The Sound of Music, Glorybee in The Beeple, the Reverend Lupin in Sweeney Todd and Wackford Squeers in Smike, as well as many other parts.

  One memorable thespian experience was when I was in the Lower Sixth and was persuaded by the producer of a local amateur dramatics group to take a minor part in a murder-mystery drama. Norman, a small balding man who invariably wore a pair of extremely tight jeans and a multicoloured T-shirt, was a very different kind of producer from Bill Hammond. He had tantrums if the actors failed to follow his precise instructions, and sometimes went off in a sulk. I was cast as the police sergeant who accompanied the investigating officer and only appeared briefly in the second and the final acts. I had but a few lines and most of these consisted of, ‘Yes, sir,’ but Norman insisted I assume a Cockney accent to give the character ‘depth’.

  I looked far too young for the part of a police sergeant, so to affect maturity the man in make-up, having slapped a thick coating of grease paint on my face and drawn a series of carmine lines across my forehead, stuck a small square black moustache beneath my nose, applied with a thick brown sticky adhesive. I had just started shaving and the application of the glutinous gum to my upper lip caused unbearable stinging. Then the itching started.

  On the first night, I appeared on stage dressed in a grey gabardine raincoat and large black trilby hat bound round with a shiny black ribbon. Catching sight of this incongruous figure with the silly black moustache, upper lip twitching, someone in the audience called out, ‘Bloody hell, it’s Charlie Chaplin.’ Things tended to go downhill after that, for the next time I appeared on stage the joker in the audience shouted, ‘Ey up, Charlie’s back!’ When I did open my mouth this was greeted with titters from the audience.

  When I exited stage right Norman was waiting for me in the wings, red and flustered. He ripped the moustache off my face and without a word stormed off. At the curtain call I bowed (minus the moustache) with my fellow actors and heard the joker in the audience call out, ‘Ey up, Charlie’s had a shave!’

  At the beginning of the final act the murderer appears on stage and shoots a second victim. At the second performance the starting pistol failed to go off. Thinking on his feet, the murderer rushed across the stage and throttled his man as the curtain descended.

  Not wishing a repetition of this in the next performance, the following night Norman produced two short planks of wood held together by a hinge. When brought together they made a cracking sound resembling a gunshot. Vernon, the stage manager, was positioned off stage with the device in case the starting pistol failed to fire at the performance. This amateur dramatic production was getting increasingly amateur.

  Norman, checking that everything was ready for the murder scene, asked Vernon, ‘Have you got the clap?’

  ‘No, Norman,’ replied Vernon, ‘it’s just the way I’m standing.’

  The review of the play in the local paper made mention of ‘the young man playing the part of the police sergeant’. It was said that ‘he added a touch of levity to an otherwise dreary plot’. One of the lead players, who did not merit a mention, was not at all pleased with this acknowledgement and glared at me when I entered the dressing room for the final performance.

  ‘Who does he think he is, Laurence bloody Olivier?’ I heard him asking another aggrieved member of the cast who had not been mentioned in the paper either.

  I decided that this would be my last excursion on the amateur stage.

  43

  For the two years of the O level course I had worked hard and got a good set of GCE passes. The door on to the wide world was now open for me. Walking through town a week after the results, a great booming voice echoed across All Saints’ Square: ‘Phinny! Phinny!’ It was Mr Firth. Unusually for a sunny summer’s day, he was dressed in an old tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and lining the cuffs, heavy brogues, shirt, cardigan and tie. ‘Phinny!’ he shouted, ‘over here!’ Taking a deep breath I walked over to meet him.

  ‘Now then, Phinny!’

  ‘Morning, sir,’ I said, standing to attention.

  He thrust out a hand the size of a small spade. ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘I’m very pleased with your history result but I think you could have done better.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ I replied. I almost felt like apologizing.

  ‘If Cardinal Wolsey and William of Orange had come up, I reckon you would have got the top marks, but that’s the luck of the draw with exams. It’s a lottery. Always has been and always will be. Anyhow, you didn’t do all that badly.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘And now it’s the sixth form, is it?’

  ‘No sir.’

  ‘No?’ he snapped.

  ‘No, sir,’ I told him. ‘I’m leaving. I’m going to be a trainee accountant.’

  ‘A trainee bloody accountant?’ It was the first time I think I had heard any teacher swear. ‘A trainee bloody accountant?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes sir,’ I said. ‘I had an interview at Hart, Moss & Copley on Moorgate Street just before my results came out and Mr Copley said that if I get five good O levels, including maths and English, he would take me on.’

  Mrs Gill, Mum’s best friend, was Company Secretary at Thomas Wilde & Son in Sheffield and she had arranged for me to have a preliminary talk with a senior partner at Hart, Moss & Copley, Chartered Accountants. I had presented myself at the plush offices on Moorgate Street, in a new suit, hair short and slicked back, with highly polished black shoes, and sat before one of the senior partners. He appeared every inch what I imagined an accountant would look like, in his dark suit and with a pair of half-moon spectacles perched on the end of his nose.

  ‘Well, young man,’ said the senior partner, tapping my letter of application before him on his desk, ‘you’ve done adequately enough in your school exams though not spectacularly well, you seem a biddable young man and are smartly turned out.’ He looked over the rims of his spectacles and scrutinized me. ‘Do you reckon you have the makings of a trainee accountant?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I replied.

  ‘Well, if your references from school are in order, I’m minded to give you a chance.’

&nbs
p; ‘Thank you, sir,’ I mumbled, feeling myself swell with pride. He looked at me expectantly and began rotating his thumbs slowly around one another. He was clearly waiting for something further from me.

  ‘Well, young man,’ he continued, after a long pause. ‘Go ahead. Sell yourself.’

  I must have acquitted myself reasonably well because he nodded approvingly after each answer. ‘Now, I see you have the required O levels but you will have to take a lot more exams to become a qualified accountant. It will not be easy. You’re prepared for that, are you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Can you can start in September?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He leaned across the desk and held out a hand. ‘Welcome to Hart, Moss & Copley,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘And that’s what you want to do, is it?’ asked Mr Firth, when I told him about the interview. ‘Add figures up all day in a dark and dusty office? Deal with tax forms and tiresome financial audits? Be a trainee accountant?’ He stressed the words ‘trainee accountant’ as if they were an insult. ‘Whatever do you want to be a trainee accountant for?’

  ‘It’s a good job, sir.’

  ‘You want to teach, lad, teach. That’s your future – teaching – inspiring young people. It’s the best job in the world. You think on, Phinny, teaching’s for you.’

  Three days later I received a letter from the Rotherham Education Office inviting me to attend an interview with Mr Bloomer, the Director of Education. I had never met Mr Bloomer but had been at primary school with his daughter and knew that he was a very important man, in charge of all the schools in the town. I reported to the reception at the Education Office on the appointed day and at the appointed time and waited in the outer office. I couldn’t understand why he would wish to see me. The secretary occasionally looked up from her papers but said nothing until the buzzer on her desk sounded.

  ‘You may go in, young man,’ she told me, ‘and remember to call the Director “sir”.’

  The room I entered was large and dark-panelled. Great glass-fronted bookcases full of leather-bound tomes lined one wall, and framed pictures and prints, no doubt drawn and painted by the town’s children and students, were displayed on the other. Opposite the bookcases a window gave an uninterrupted view over the town. Many years later, when I was appointed as General Adviser for Language Development with Rotherham, I was shown into the very same room. The desk, bookcases and prints were still there and the smell had lingered too.

  Mr Bloomer sat behind his large mahogany desk and invited me to take a seat in front of him.

  ‘Now then, young man,’ he said, ‘what is this that I hear about you leaving school before your A levels?’

  I explained that I had been offered a junior position at an accountant’s in the town.

  ‘Your headmaster has had a word with me and he is of the opinion that you ought to stay on.’ He looked down at a piece of paper before him on the desk. ‘You’ve done pretty well in your O levels and have a bright future ahead of you. Your teachers think highly of you, as indeed does Mr Williams, who feels you should continue your studies.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I replied, not really knowing what to say.

  ‘If you were to stay on at school, what A levels would you take?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve not really thought about it, sir,’ I replied.

  ‘Well, give it a little thought now.’

  ‘I suppose I would take the subjects I like best,’ I replied eventually. ‘Probably English literature, history and geography.’

  ‘Arts subjects,’ said Mr Bloomer. ‘Not really the sort of subjects suitable for accountancy, I should have thought. It seems to me mathematics would be more appropriate.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Now look, young man,’ he said looking across the desk, ‘I agree with Mr Williams. I think you should stay on and do your A levels. If, after that, you still feel accountancy is the profession for you, then you can become a trainee, but get a few A levels under your belt first. I feel certain Mr Copley will take you on if you still feel inclined to become an accountant.’ It seemed to me that everyone knew about my intentions and had a vested interest in my future. I suppose Mr Firth had related our conversation in All Saints’ Square to Mr Williams, who, in turn, had contacted the Director of Education to use his influence.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘Mr Williams and I are very proud of the fact that some young people like you, who didn’t get the chance to go to the grammar school, have done so well. You have achieved results much better than some who did pass their Eleven Plus and you have done that through hard work and determination. My advice, young man, is to stay on at school and keep your options open. Have a word with your parents and see what they say. You might consider training for the teaching profession. We need people like you in our schools.’

  At the time I didn’t think it was particularly unusual for the Director of Education to summon a pupil to his office and give him the benefit of his advice, but now I know that it was. It seems amazing to me when I think about it now that someone as important and as busy as Mr Bloomer should take a personal interest in just one student. It had never occurred to me until Mr Firth raised the matter that I should train to become a teacher, but after that encounter with him in All Saints’ Square and subsequently with Mr Bloomer, a seed was planted and things in my life began to change. Had I not met Mr Firth on that day my life might have taken a very different course.

  In September 1964 I joined the sixth form at Oakwood Technical High School for Boys. I thought perhaps that the headmaster might meet me, introduce himself and welcome me to the school, but he left that to the school secretary, a bright and cheerful woman who said that should I want to know anything I should come and ask her. I found that Mrs Ranby was true to her word, and I often called into the office for her help and advice. On that first day she took me down the cold tiled corridor to the sixth form classroom, chattering inconsequentially and pointing things out.

  ‘You’ll be very happy here,’ she told me. I can’t say that I felt reassured.

  On that first morning, like any new boy, I felt apprehensive and under-confident as I stood in my smart new black blazer and badge in front of the Lower Sixth class, to be introduced by the form master. I recall that he got my name wrong – something I have had to put up with for most of my life. Indeed, on all the reports from Oakwood both my names are spelt incorrectly. All eyes stared at me as if I were some strange exhibit in a museum case. Perhaps these superior-looking boys were wondering just how an Eleven Plus failure would cope with the academic rigour of advanced study. They had gone through the school together, sat and passed their examinations together and made close friendships. These boys I now had to mix with were well-established. I knew nothing of their backgrounds, what they discussed, their academic achievements, and I had no experience of their world. I knew no one at the school on that first morning, and although I felt nervous and lonely as I glanced at the staring faces before me, I was determined to stay the course. I remember thinking to myself that I was as good as they were, and even if I didn’t settle in here, make friends or even enjoy the courses, studying at the high school would be a means to an end. I had a good string of O levels, some with distinction, and had a firmness of purpose. I would persevere, keep my head down and work hard.

  As it turned out, some of the boys were friendly and I was soon disabused of the idea that they were all stuck up and stand-offish. Mathematics, history, economics, music, geography, the sciences could be offered at A level in the boys’ school but not English literature or French, so I, along with five other boys, had to study for part of the time in the girls’ high school.

  It was a strange and not altogether unpleasant experience striding down the corridor at the all girls’ school to be eyed by gaggles of giggling girls in brown uniforms and observed by sharp-eyed women teachers in black gowns and with severe expressions. We must have looked gauche and gangly as we entered the room of the Head of the
English Department.

  Miss Mary Wainwright was a diminutive, softly-spoken woman dressed in a pristine white blouse with a lace collar, done up at the neck with small pearl buttons. She was swathed in a long, pleated tweed skirt, dark brown stockings and small leather brogues. The delicate embroidered handkerchief that she secreted up her sleeve would be occasionally plucked out to dab her mouth. Save for the large cameo brooch placed at her throat, she wore no jewellery and there was no vestige of make-up. She lined up her new students, a motley group of spotty, lanky boys, and peered up at us. ‘I’ve never taught boys,’ she said, and then, after a long pause and with a twinkle in her dark eyes, she added, ‘But I’ve heard of them.’

  We studied two of Shakespeare’s greatest plays – Richard II and Hamlet, the longest and most tedious of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – The Knight’s Tale and The Prologue – The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Joseph Andrews by the eighteenth-century novelist Henry Fielding and the poetry of John Keats. I was pleased to see that Thomas Hardy’s tragic tale The Mayor of Casterbridge was on the syllabus, but disappointed that D. H. Lawrence and Charles Dickens were not.

  In the first week I kept a very low profile, saying little but watching the other students, who did not appear as clever and self-assured as I’d imagined they would be. I was pleased that the first text we studied was The Mayor of Casterbridge. I had read several of Thomas Hardy’s novels and really enjoyed them, and I was familiar with some of the literary devices he was prone to using.