Trouble at the Little Village School

by Gervase Phinn

  ‘The thing is, the school isn’t going to close,’ he reassured her, ‘so why would you leave?’

  ‘But suppose this Mr Richardson at Urebank gets the headship and I have to work as his deputy? It would be unbearable.’

  ‘That’s not on the cards, is it?’

  ‘Well, Mr Preston didn’t go into that, but the papers I was given at the Education Office before I left say there will be one head teacher based at one site, probably with the junior children, and the deputy at the other with the infants and there may be staff redeployments and redundancies. Then the term had hardly started and I was savaged by a Rottweiler.’

  ‘You were what?’

  ‘Metaphorically speaking. Miss Sowerbutts cornered me by the school gates and had a go at me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I told a parent I didn’t agree with what had been said to her about her son when Miss Sowerbutts was head of the school. I think perhaps it was a bit unprofessional, but I was so angry at what she had said. Do you know, she told the parent—’

  Dr Stirling placed a finger gently over her lips. ‘No more,’ he said, leaning closer to her. He kissed her again.

  The door opened and James and Danny rushed in. ‘Oh hello, Mrs Devine,’ they said in unison. ‘Dad,’ said James, ‘can you tell Danny that a bishop is worth more than a knight?’

  Dr Stirling sighed and shook his head. Elisabeth smiled.

  ‘’Ello, Mrs Sloughthwaite,’ said Danny, coming into the village store on the Sunday morning. He was holding a small bunch of white flowers.

  ‘Hello, love,’ replied the shopkeeper. ‘Are those for me?’

  ‘No,’ he replied.

  ‘For your girlfriend, are they?’

  ‘I ’aven’t got no girlfriend,’ he told her, colouring up. ‘I’m not into lasses. I’m sick of that Chardonnay following me round and making eyes at me. I can’t go anywhere without ’er being behind me. And that Chantelle’s t’same. I’m sick of it. I’m ’appy wi’ mi ferret. Tha know where thy are wi’ ferrets. Ya never know where ya are wi’ lasses.’

  ‘So who are the flowers for then?’ asked the shopkeeper.

  ‘I’m tekkin ’em to purron mi grandad’s grave. I want to tidy it up a bit this morning.’

  ‘That’s a nice thought, but it’s a bit cold for gardening.’

  ‘I don’t mind t’cold,’ the boy told her. ‘I’m used to it.’ He waved the flowers. ‘These are called Christmas roses but they’re not really roses and they don’t flower at Christmas either. Mi granddad loved these flowers. ’E planted ’em at t’back o’caravan and they’re the first flowers along wi’ snowdrops what ya see in January.’

  ‘You’d think the frost would kill them,’ remarked the shopkeeper.

  ‘Well, it dunt seem to,’ replied the boy.

  ‘They’re just right for your granddad’s grave,’ said Mrs Sloughthwaite, assuming her usual position leaning over the counter. ‘Mrs O’Connor was telling me that you’ve settled in at Clumber Lodge with Dr Stirling,’ she said, beginning her interrogation.

  ‘Yeah, I really like it theer,’ the boy told her.

  ‘You’re a very lucky boy, Danny Stainthorpe, to have found such a good home.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And a little bird tells me that Dr Stirling is minded to adopt you?’

  The boy’s face lit up. ‘Yeah, ’e is. I’m really hexcited.’

  ‘I bet you are, living in that lovely big house.’

  ‘I’ve got a bedroom of mi own and I can keep mi ferret in his cage in t’shed at t’back and Mrs O’Connor’s a really good cook.’

  ‘You seem to have fallen on your feet,’ observed the shopkeeper.

  ‘I ’ave,’ replied the boy, nodding.

  ‘And did you have a nice Christmas?’

  ‘Yeah, it were great.’

  ‘Did you spend it at home with Dr Stirling then?’ She recalled Mrs Lloyd telling her that Chardonnay had gone around to Dr Stirling’s on Christmas Day when her sister went into labour but found no one at home, so she knew full well that Danny had not spent the day at Clumber Lodge.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So did you go out to a restaurant?’

  ‘No.’

  The boy was less than forthcoming so the shopkeeper decided to get straight to the point. ‘So, where did you have your Christmas dinner then?’

  ‘At Wisteria Cottage.’

  ‘Oh, at Mrs Devine’s.’ She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Yeah, she invited us all round and cooked t’best Christmas dinner I’ve ever ’ad. She’s a really good cook, is Mrs Devine.’

  Was there anything this superwoman was not good at? mused the shopkeeper.

  ‘That was kind of her.’

  ‘I really like Mrs Devine,’ said the boy.

  ‘And from the sound of it Dr Stirling does as well,’ remarked the shopkeeper, probing.

  ‘We had a really great time. I need to get on, Mrs Sloughthwaite, so do ya sell cat food?’

  ‘I do, love. Is it for your ferret?’

  ‘No, it’s for a cat.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a cat.’

  ‘It’s not mine. It’s a stray.’

  ‘Is it a cream colour with a black face and sticky-up ears?’

  ‘’Ow did ya know that?’

  ‘Because it’s Miss Sowerbutts’s cat and she’s been looking for it. Last time she saw it, it was running out of her kitchen with a salmon tin stuck on its head.’

  ‘That’s ’ow I found it, down by t’millpond. There’s a pair of kingfishers down theer and I went to see ’em and I saw this cat. I thowt it were dead at fust, an’ then I saw its belly movin’ up and down. It couldn’t breathe properly. Anyroad, I managed to get t’tin off of its ’ead.’

  ‘And however did you manage to do that?’ asked the shopkeeper.

  The boy produced a knife from his pocket and placed the flowers on the counter. Then he held the knife with one hand and tapped his nose with the other. ‘Swiss army knife,’ he told her. ‘It’s got all sorts o’ things on. It were mi granddad’s. It ’as a tin oppener.’

  ‘That was handy,’ remarked the shopkeeper.

  ‘Well, ya never know, Mrs Sloughthwaite,’ said the boy grinning, ‘when you might come across a cat wi’ a tin on its ’ead. Anyway, I gorrit off and now t’cat won’t stop followin’ me abaat.’

  ‘A bit like them two lasses you were telling me about,’ said Mrs Sloughthwaite, winking.

  Danny grimaced. ‘So could I ’ave a tin o’ cat food please, Mrs Sloughthwaite? It looks dead ’ungry.’

  ‘I wouldn’t feed it if I were you, love,’ she told him, recalling Miss Sowerbutts’s description of the special diet the animal was on. ‘You take it round to Mrs Sowerbutts – you never know, you might get a reward.’ And pigs might fly, she thought.

  The boy gave a small shudder and pulled a face. ‘I don’t want to go round to ’er house,’ said Danny. ‘I’ll ’ave to see ’er and I can do wi’out that.’

  ‘Well, just put the cat in her garden then,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Then it’ll know where it is and you won’t have to see Miss Sowerbutts.’

  ‘OK, Mrs Sloughthwaite,’ said Danny.

  She passed a bar of chocolate across the counter. ‘And have this on me,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks Mrs Sloughthwaite,’ he said.

  ‘And you say hello to your granddad for me, will you? I reckon he’s up there in heaven looking down on you and feeling happy with how things have turned out.’

  ‘D’ya think ’e is?’ asked the boy thoughtfully.

  ‘I’m sure he is, love.’ She passed him the flowers. ‘Now you run along.’

  So, Dr Stirling and the boys spent Christmas at Wisteria Cottage, did they, Mrs Sloughthwaite reflected when the boy had gone. Funny that Mrs O’Connor had never mentioned it when she was in the store. Although she had spent Christmas with her sister in Ireland, she would have known. Of course, Mrs O’Connor was always very circumspect. She
gave nothing away. Mrs Sloughthwaite, resting her bosom on the counter, smiled to herself, feeling rather pleased. There was nothing she could not find out – one way or the other.

  ‘Would you mind, Fred!’ shouted the landlord of the Blacksmith’s Arms.

  ‘Would I mind what?’ asked Fred Massey gruffly. He was dressed in his ill-fitting Sunday best suit, a bargain from a charity shop, and was standing with his back to the fire warming himself and shielding any heat from the other three customers in the public house, who sat at a small table by the window.

  ‘Would you mind shifting yourself out from in front of the fire?’ said the landlord. ‘You’re blocking all the heat.’

  ‘I don’t hear anyone complaining,’ said Fred.

  ‘Well, I am,’ the landlord told him. ‘Now shift yourself.’

  Grumbling, Fred moved away and approached the bar. ‘You wants to get this here chimney seen to,’ he said. ‘Yon fire gives out about as much heat as a frigid polar bear in a snowstorm. It all goes up the chimney.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t like it,’ retorted the landlord, ‘you can always take your custom elsewhere. You’re lucky I’ve let you come back in here after that argument you had with Albert Spearman, attacking him with your crutch.’

  ‘I didn’t attack him,’ Fred snorted. ‘I poked him and he deserved it, conning our Clarence into buying that duff animal feed soon as my back’s turned and me disabled as well.’

  Clarence, Fred’s long-suffering nephew, had held the fort on the farm while his uncle had been incapacitated after an accident with the sugar beet cutter. His uncle had been taken to hospital and had spent the next month hobbling about the village on crutches, moaning and groaning.

  ‘Albert Spearman must have thought my brains were made of porridge, trying to pull a fast one like that,’ he said now. ‘Tried to palm him off with a load of rubbish. Didn’t think I’d notice. Aye, well I did.’

  ‘I know all about that, Fred,’ said the landlord. ‘I’ve heard it often enough, as have most people who come in here. Now, I’m telling you, any more trouble out of you and I shall bar you again.’

  ‘You come into the village pub for a quiet Sunday lunchtime drink,’ said Fred loudly to no one in particular, ‘and you get harassed. Give us another pint.’ He looked around the bar to find someone whom he could engage in conversation and give the benefit of his opinions, but seeing that the few customers were clearly not interested in what he had to say, he turned to the landlord, who began pulling the pint.

  ‘Quiet in here this lunchtime,’ he observed. ‘Mind you, I’m not surprised, price you charge for the beer.’

  ‘I’ve told you what you can do if you don’t like it,’ replied the landlord. ‘The Mucky Duck’s just down the road.’

  Like most in the village, the landlord didn’t like the constantly complaining, tight-fisted, bad-tempered Fred Massey, but he put up with him because, unpleasant as the man was, he was a regular after all and custom was custom. ‘So how is your Clarence?’ he asked, placing the pint on the bar.

  ‘As much use as a lump of stale bread,’ Fred replied, counting out coins from an ancient leather purse before placing a mound of silver and copper on the bar.

  ‘Fagin’s hoard,’ remarked the landlord, collecting up the change. ‘I don’t know how that lad puts up with you,’ he said. ‘You’re always at him.’

  ‘Always at him!’ exclaimed Fred. ‘Huh. He’s gormless. Only let out yon Texel ram into the field with the yows last September time and now I’ve got all these bloody lambs all over the shop. Daft ha’peth that he is. He never listens to what I say. Then last week what did he do?’

  ‘I can’t guess,’ said the landlord, ‘but I have an idea you’re going to tell me.’

  ‘I said to him, I said don’t let the cows into the field until you’ve filled the troughs with their feed because they’ll be hungry, bunch together and make a dash for it. So what did he do?’

  ‘You tell me,’ sighed the landlord.

  ‘He lets the beasts into the field and then starts to fill the trough. Cattle stampede, knock him clean over and he ends up face down buried under all the cattle feed with a broken arm and bruising. I mean, what good is he to me now? I’ll have to do all the work myself.’

  ‘That’ll be a change,’ observed the landlord.

  ‘And another thing,’ continued Fred.

  ‘Oh, I thought there would be something else,’ said the landlord, praying that another customer might come in.

  ‘I’ve been telling Clarence time and time again to go up to the graveyard and get it fettled. Every time I see that snooty vicar’s wife she’s at me about it. I goes up there yesterday and find that somebody else has been cutting and a-pruning. I tackled Mrs Atticus but she says she’s not asked anybody else to do it and knows nowt about it. Then she bends my ear saying it was about time somebody tidied up the graveyard and she’s not complaining if somebody else has had the civic duty to do it. Well, I’ll tell you this, when I find out who’s taking the bread out of my mouth I shall a have few well-chosen words to say to him.’

  ‘And what will they be?’ asked the landlord.

  ‘I don’t know, I’ve not chosen them yet. ’Course it’s all Clarence’s fault.’

  ‘I guessed as much,’ sighed the landlord.

  ‘I told him, I said you should have fettled that graveyard at the back end of last year. Not much chance now is there, what with his broken arm. He’s got no common sense that lad.’

  ‘Not like his uncle then,’ observed the landlord, smiling, ‘who goes and shoves his foot into a sugar beet cutter.’

  Fred scowled. ‘I don’t know what to do with the lad. He should be married and with kids at his age. Twenty-five and he’s never had a girlfriend, not as I know of, and there’s plenty of likely lasses about at the Young Farmers. I mean I know he’s not God’s gift to look at, but he’s got a steady job and he’s in line to take over the farm when I push up the daisies.’

  ‘You never bothered getting married yourself, then?’ teased the landlord.

  Fred scowled and took his pint to a corner table. ‘No chance. In my book marriage is a dull slow meal with the pudding coming first. In olden days women were made for the comfort of men and they knew their place, cooking and cleaning and looking after the home while men earned the brass. Not now. I’m better off on my own.’

  ‘I’ll not disagree with you there,’ remarked the landlord.

  A moment later Major C. J. Neville-Gravitas breezed into the Blacksmith’s Arms.

  ‘Good day, landlord,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘Morning, major. Your usual?’

  ‘Just the ticket,’ he said, ‘and make it one for yourself, my good man.’ He stroked his moustache and looked around smiling.

  ‘Thank you kindly, major,’ said the landlord.

  ‘And how are you, landlord, on this bright crisp day?’ asked Major Neville-Gravitas.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you, major. How about you?’

  ‘Tip-top.’

  ‘What’s all this about school joining up with yon school down the road?’ came a loud voice from the end of the bar.

  ‘That is the plan, Mr Massey,’ replied the major.

  ‘So you’re not hell-bent on closing the village school, like what you tried to do before?’

  ‘Mr Massey,’ replied the major, ‘I did not try to close the school.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t vote to keep it open, did you?’

  ‘I have explained to you and indeed to many others in the village,’ said the major angrily, ‘that I abstained from the vote in the first instance but was most supportive when I saw how successful the school was becoming. Now can we let the matter lie?’

  ‘Bit late in the day,’ remarked Fred. ‘And you only did it then because you saw the strength of feeling in the village.’

  ‘Don’t you tell me what I did and what I didn’t do!’ exclaimed the major. ‘We have had this conversation before and I do not intend to discu
ss it any further.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you this—’ began Fred mulishly.

  ‘Don’t!’ exclaimed the landlord. ‘You’ve been warned. Another word out of you, Fred Massey, and you can take your custom elsewhere.’

  ‘I was only saying—’ began Fred.

  ‘Well, don’t!’ snapped the landlord.

  Major C. J. Neville-Gravitas placed a five-pound note on the bar, gulped his whisky and strode for the door. ‘Thank you, Fred,’ said the landlord. ‘That’s another customer you’ve got rid of for me.’

  Chapter 9

  The morning was cold and bright that Sunday. Elisabeth paused from hanging some nuts up for the birds in her garden to listen for a moment to the bells of St Christopher’s ringing out and calling the faithful for morning service. How happy she was in the village in her cosy cottage, with the school thriving, working with supportive colleagues and finding new friends. There was also Michael Stirling, to whom she was becoming more and more attached. She just hoped things could stay like this. Of course, her life might be turned upside down with the prospect of the amalgamation. It was like a heavy weight hanging over her. But it was too nice a day to have such depressing thoughts, so she banished them, breathed in the fresh air and surveyed the swathe of green beyond the cottage, rising to the fell side and dotted with browsing sheep. A fat pheasant strutted along the rutted, tussocky track, and high above in a milky sky the rooks screeched and circled. A rabbit scuttered out from its hole and stared at her for a moment before lolloping away. She was about to head indoors when she caught sight of a large figure in an old tweed skirt, shapeless waxed jacket and heavy green rubber boots striding down the track which ran past the cottage. A small hairy terrier scampered behind her, its tongue lolling and its tail wagging frantically. When the dog saw Elisabeth it ran towards her, yapping.

  ‘Gordon!’ came a thunderous voice from the track. ‘Get back here immediately, you silly creature!’ The dog scurried to his mistress. ‘The times I tell him not to run off like that,’ said Lady Wadsworth to Elisabeth. ‘He takes not a blind bit of notice of me. He’s a little rascal.’

  ‘He’s a fine dog,’ said Elisabeth.