Head Over Heels in the Dales

by Gervase Phinn

  I avoided meeting Mr McNab’s eye as we made our way back into school.

  The next lesson I observed was chemistry. ‘Equipment!’ the teacher repeated with a hollow laugh, when I asked about the various resources and materials the students would be using. ‘You mean Bunsen burners, bottles of acid, glass beakers? I don’t give this lot rulers, Mr Phinn, never mind equipment.’

  During the very noisy lesson, while the tired-looking woman in a white coat was attempting to explain about osmosis, a topic way beyond the pupils’ understanding and of no interest to them whatsoever, Dean, the heavily tattooed individual, leaned back on his seat casually so his face was level with my own and commented in a voice loud enough to carry, ‘She’s not up to much, is she?’

  ‘I suggest you keep your clever comments to yourself,’ I retorted. ‘Listen to the teacher and be quiet!’

  He scowled and continued to rock on two legs of the chair.

  The first lesson of the afternoon was geography. Dean was the centre of attention for the whole hour, talking loudly, poking the boy in front, flicking paper, making fatuous comments and generally being a nuisance. Bianca was calm in comparison; she just sat there with a bored look on her face. The teacher, a man with a long, wrinkled face of tragic potential, seemed to have become accustomed to the noise which was loud and penetrating, and appeared fully resigned to the poor behaviour of the pupils.

  ‘The noise level in the room was deafening,’ I told him after the lesson.

  ‘Oh yes, I know, Mr Phinn,’ he declared dolefully, ‘but you only had to put up with it for an hour. I have this noise all the year round.’

  ‘The lesson was terribly disorganised,’ I continued.

  ‘It was, wasn’t it?’ he agreed, nodding slowly.

  ‘How do you feel about the criticism?’ I asked him.

  ‘How do I feel?’ he repeated. His face seemed to express some amazement at the question. ‘How do I feel? Now, that’s a question and a half, isn’t it? I feel like a lion tamer without a whip, if you want me to be perfectly frank, or a swimmer in a pool of piranhas.’

  I stared at him mutely for a moment. ‘Is it always like this?’

  ‘Mostly,’ he replied, ‘but I don’t let it get to me. I’ve got high blood pressure, you see, so I can’t get too excited. I’m on medication and a high fibre diet.’ His face suddenly brightened. ‘I’ve got a caravan on the coast, you know, and it’s the only thing that keeps me sane. I finish at the end of next term.’ He sighed happily. ‘Then you won’t see me for dust. I’m going to open a health food shop in Fettlesham and spend my days in peaceful retirement, selling dried fruit, branflakes and nuts. These pupils, as you have no doubt surmised, Mr Phinn, have very limited language skills. They find basic reading very difficult so when faced with some of the examination questions they just cannot make head nor tail of them. I mean, on last year’s paper one of the questions was about Scottish lochs affording deep-water berthage. Well, I ask you, how many people could understand that? Then there was another question about an oil pipeline running across Alaska and they were asked why the oil wasn’t flowing as quickly as it did in the Middle East. It was all to do with temperature but they had no idea that Alaska was cold and the Middle East hot. That’s the extent of their general knowledge, yon see.’

  My response could not have been more forthright. ‘Surely that is your job, to teach them?’ I responded.

  ‘Ooooh, easier said than done, Mr Phinn,’ he replied amiably and quite unperturbed, as if the criticism were some sort of commendation. ‘I do try but I seem to get nowhere.’

  ‘Have the students been on any geography field trips?’ I asked, pretty sure what the answer would be.

  ‘No, no. I did take a group once but it was more trouble than it was worth. I said after the disastrous trip to Whitby that I would never take a class on a trip to the coast again. They were up the cliffs, in the sea, on the abbey walls, dropping litter, throwing pebbles, chasing seagulls. Getting them on the coach was like rounding up a herd of wild horses. I was trying to count them when Francine, the big girl with the short hair, asked me if we could wait just another few minutes because she wanted to see Hipno. “Hippo, what hippo?” I asked. “Hipno, Hipno the rapist. He’s just gone to get a cuppa, said he’d be back in five minutes,” she said. “What rapist?” I asked her. “He’s got a booth down there,” she said and pointed to this big placard propped against the wall which announced in large, lurid lettering, HYPNOTHERAPIST. I ask you, Hypno the Rapist!’

  At afternoon break Bianca told me that the final lesson of the day would be religious education with Mr Griffith. The idea of Dean and an RE class, the last thing on a Friday afternoon, did not bear thinking about.

  ‘It’s a right laugh,’ added the girl, examining yet another chewed finger nail, before asking me. ‘You ‘aven’t got a nail file on you, ‘ave you?’

  That phrase, ‘it’s a right laugh’, I thought to myself, could mean one of two things. It could mean that the lesson would be generally entertaining and amusing or, on the other hand, complete and utter chaos. Having seen Dean and the class in action all day, I predicted that it would be the latter.

  When Bianca and I arrived at the classroom, the students were, to my great surprise, lining up in an orderly fashion. There was no pushing or jostling, there was no shouting or arguing: in fact, the noise level for the first time that day was unusually low. Dean, who leaned quietly against the wall, seemed to have undergone a miraculous transformation. He just nodded at Bianca when she slipped in beside him. I joined the end of the line awaiting the arrival of Mr Griffith. I imagined that at any moment a great hairy mountain of a man with shoulders as broad as a barn door, the sort who looked as if he played prop forward for Wales, would emerge from around the corner. I was entirely mistaken, for a minute later a diminutive man dressed in a bright and baggy orange track-suit, circa 1950, the crackly nylon variety, appeared at the end of the corridor. He was carrying a large multi-coloured mug. Mr Griffith looked as if he had survived the electric chair for his wild hair, which was the colour and texture of wire wool, stuck up fantastically.

  ‘Who is that at the back? Come out!’ he roared. I stepped forward. ‘Oh! I’m very sorry. It’s a school inspector. I thought for moment it was the new boy.’ He made a sort of flourish with his hand. ‘We are greatly honoured this afternoon, five set nine, to have with us such an eminent visitor. Mr Flynn, is it?’

  ‘Phinn,’ I told him.

  ‘Ah yes, Phinn, as in the shark.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, Mr Griffith,’ I replied, thinking of the ordeal ahead of me.

  ‘And you are with us for this lesson?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well, you are in, Mr Phinn, for a rare treat this afternoon, a rare treat. What’s he in for, five set nine?’

  ‘A rare treat!’ the class chorused.

  ‘Stand up straight there, Dean,’ said the teacher, Slice and smart. Look tidy boy, look tidy.’

  Dean immediately did as he was told.

  As soon as I had seen at close quarters the multi-coloured mug that the teacher held, I knew I was in for a rather different experience compared with the other lessons of the day, for emblazoned on the side were the words, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me.’

  ‘This is my very favourite class, you know, Mr Phinn,’ the teacher told me. ‘They are a grand lot. What are you, five set nine?’

  ‘A grand lot,’ the pupils chorused.

  ‘Of course,’ Mr Griffith told me, whispering in my ear, ‘as the head of religious education, I have an easy time, compared with my colleagues in other subjects, you know.’

  ‘An easy time?’ I repeated in disbelief.

  ‘Yes, indeed. You see, unlike the head of the English department, I only have the one set book. Now, you come along in, Mr Phinn, but don’t talk too fast otherwise they’ll be up and dancing. Now, you are with Bianca, aren’t you? Well, sit at the back next to her.’ M
y heart sank. That would put me between her and Desperate Dean.

  When the pupils had settled down in their seats the teacher began the lesson. He took centre stage, fixed the class with a dramatic stare and began. ‘Now, we got up to the part last week where Pontius Pilate had washed his hands of Jesus. Washed his hands! Do you know what they did then?’

  ‘No, sir,’ chorused the class.

  ‘Great big whip!’ Mr Griffith estimated the size of the whip by pulling his hands slowly apart to the length of about three feet. ‘That big, Francine.’

  ‘Ooooo!’ whimpered a large girl on the front desk. Her eyes were wide in amazement.

  ‘And they scourged Him with it.’ The teacher provided us all with a most impressive and realistic mime of the whipping. ‘Good word that, “scourge”. I’ll write it on the blackboard.’ The teacher looked in my direction. ‘Pity we can’t do a bit of scourging in schools, Mr Phinn. A touch of the old scourging would do Dean a power of good, wouldn’t it, Dean?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the boy replied with good humour.

  ‘Now, after they had whipped Him and hit Him and spat at Him and kicked Him and called Him names, do you know what they did next?’

  ‘No, sir,’ chorused the class a second time.

  ‘Great big piece of purple rag!’ Again the teacher demonstrated the width. ‘And they wrapped it around Him and laughed and jeered and scoffed and sneered and called Him “King of the Jews”.’

  ‘Aaaah!’ whimpered the large girl at the front.

  ‘Now, after they had whipped Him and hit Him and spat at Him and kicked Him and called Him names and wrapped Him in this piece of purple rag, do you know what they did next?’

  ‘No, sir,’ chorused the class a third time.

  ‘Great big cross!’ Mr Griffith estimated the size of the cross by stretching his hands heavenwards. ‘That big, Francine.’

  ‘Ooooo!’ murmured the girl, her hand to her mouth.

  ‘And they made Him drag it through the streets, all the while mocking and cursing and jeering Him. Simon of Cyrene came out of an alleyway to help Him with the cross, as you would, but he was pushed back by the Roman soldiers who made Jesus drag the instrument of His death to the Hill of Skulls.’ Mr Griffith paused for effect. ‘Now, I’m talking here about the Son of God. The Son of God! He could have clicked His fingers and they would have all been dust under His sandals. He had the power in His finger to devastate – to DEVASTATE – the whole world but He didn’t, see. He let them do it. He let them hurt Him and humiliate Him and He never raised a finger against them. Now I bet you that if someone did that to you, Dean, and you had that power just by raising a finger to kill the lot of them, you wouldn’t just stand there and take it, would you?’

  ‘No, sir, I’d have killed the whole lot of’em,’ replied the boy forcefully.

  ‘Then why didn’t Jesus? Why did He let them do all that to Him? What was the point of all that suffering? Just think about it for a moment.’ A silence descended on the class. ‘You see,’ continued the teacher after a minute, ‘not only was Jesus the gentlest, most loving and completely harmless man in the world, He was also the most courageous to undergo that suffering. Do you know what they did then?’

  ‘No, sir,’ chorused the class.

  I prepared myself for the gruesome account which would inevitably follow.

  ‘They crucified Him. They nailed Him to that cross and He died. And the soldiers gambled over the only things He owned – the few clothes from His back – and His mother watched Him die a slow and painful death and His friends deserted him. His best friend, Peter, denied he even knew Him. Three times he said, “I do not know this man.” And there hung the Son of God who had harmed no one.’

  I had heard the story of the crucifixion a thousand times but, on this occasion, when that awesome silence fell on the class, I felt my heart begin to thump in my chest and tears pricking my eyes. I glanced across at Dean. He sat, mouth open like a netted fish, with real tears above the tattooed tears, totally captivated and moved by the saddest story of all time.

  ‘But do you know what they did before they did that?’ roared the teacher, making the whole class, myself included, jump in our seats.

  ‘No, sir,’ I heard myself saying.

  ‘They took a crown of thorns – a crown of thorns – and they rammed it, yes, they rammed it on His head.’

  In the deathly silence which greeted this, Dean turned to me and said with a curl of the top lip, ‘The bastards!’

  At the end of the lesson, when the pupils had set off home, Mr Griffith, whistling merrily to himself, packed away his books, straightened the classroom and walked with me to the staff room.

  ‘How did I get on then, Mr Phinn?’ he asked.

  I looked down at the blank page in my notebook. ‘I’ve not written a thing,’ I replied. ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘My father was a great Baptist preacher in Wales, you know. After chapel, he valued education above all else. Of course, that’s a Welsh characteristic, you know. Lloyd George once said: “The Welsh have a passion for education and the English have no particular objection to it.” Well, my father brought the Bible to life, see. He lifted the sacred text off the page.’ Mr Griffith stopped and gripped my arm. ‘Now, if you think this afternoon was good, well, why don’t you come back at Christmas – I do a lovely Herod!’

  12

  ‘Are you getting all nervous, then?’ Julie asked, placing a cup of coffee on my desk. I was sorting though my early morning mail in the office prior to setting off for my last official school visit of the spring term.

  ‘I am a bit, Julie,’ I admitted. ‘It’s a big step, marriage.’

  ‘Particularly if you’ve been living on your own for so long and used to a certain routine.’

  ‘Well, it’s a matter of give and take, isn’t it?’ I replied.

  ‘In my experience, it’s the woman who gives and the man who takes.’

  ‘That is a typical cliché, and not all men are like that, Julie,’ I said. ‘Anyway, when you get married you have to get used to all your partner’s little foibles, I realise that.’

  ‘Little foibles!’ exclaimed Julie. ‘You mean dirty habits and peculiar obsessions.’

  ‘And what would a young woman like you know about dirty habits and peculiar obsessions?’ I asked, laughing.

  ‘Because I’ve lived with my parents for as long as I can remember and I have two sisters and two brothers.’ Julie sat on the corner of my desk. ‘My sisters, Karen and Anne, were love’s young dreams until their new husbands started dropping their dirty underpants all over the place, coming in stinking of beer, watching football on the television into the early hours with their noisy mates, wearing their socks three days running, leaving the top off the toothpaste and the toilet seat up, snoring like bronchial hippopotamuses every night – just like my two brothers and my dad have done all their lives. Love soon flies out of the window when you have to put up with that.’

  ‘I can’t really imagine Christine dropping dirty underwear all over the place, coming in stinking of beer and snoring like a bronchial hippopotamus,’ I told her mischievously.

  ‘I’m not talking about Christine,’ Julie said. ‘I’m talking about you. Men are different from women.’

  ‘Now there’s an original observation,’ I remarked. ‘Vive la difference?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Men think differently and behave differently. For a start they are more untidy and unhygienic. They are more inconsiderate and irritating. Now take Mr Clamp as a prime example. Can you imagine anything worse than being married to him? He’d drive anyone to drink.’

  ‘Not at all, Julie,’ I told her. ‘Sidney is a happily married man, his wife loves him dearly and I believe he is very attractive to the opposite sex. Women want to mother him.’

  ‘Smother him, more like. Mr Clamp is every woman’s nightmare.’

  At that very moment, the subject of our conversation breezed in through the office door. He was dressed in
a light cotton suit, pale yellow silk tie and sported a wide-brimmed straw hat. He looked every inch the gentleman about town. ‘Almost last day of term for us, Julie,’ he exclaimed, ‘And last week of freedom for you, Gervase.’

  ‘Don’t you start as well,’ I told him. ‘You two should be wishing me well, not trying to put me off.’

  ‘Of course we wish you well, dear boy,’ cried Sidney, putting his arm around my shoulder. ‘I am certain beyond doubt that the wedding will go beautifully, the reception swimmingly – you might even make a passable speech – the honeymoon blissfully and your life with the Aphrodite of Winnery Nook, the drop-dead gorgeous Miss Bentley in your little love nest –’ He stopped abruptly. ‘By the way, did you get your cottage?’

  Sidney’s assessment of Peewit Cottage had been remarkably accurate. The ‘beautiful listed cottage in a delightful position overlooking a watercolour landscape near the picture-postcard Dales village of Hawksrill’ needed a great deal of work. The surveyor’s report had arrived a week before the auction. Unlike the estate agent’s description, it had been far from rosy; in fact, it made the property sound as though it were on the verge of collapse. There were ‘extensive timber infestations observed throughout the property, evidence of rising and penetrating damp, significant deflections to the roof pitches, serious weathering to the stonework due to the exposed condition and age, defective guttering, lack of lateral bracing between front and rear walls’ – whatever that meant – and ‘numerous other urgent repairs’ which required immediate attention.

  Christine and I were sitting in the front room of my flat above The Rumbling Tum café with the greasy aroma drifting up the stairs and the noise of traffic in the High Street outside, and were reading through page after page of problems. Finally I threw the surveyor’s bulky report onto the table and sat back. I put my arm around Christine who looked devastated.

  ‘I knew it needed work doing to it,’ I said. ‘I mean, it’s old and hasn’t been lived in for ages, but I didn’t reckon on all that amount.’