Head Over Heels in the Dales

by Gervase Phinn

  On our way back to the staff room for a cup of tea, Lord Marrick beamed with pleasure at the children. ‘Well, that was splendid. You have both been excellent guides.’

  ‘My brother’s called Earl, you know,’ announced Tony.

  ‘Is he really?’ replied Lord Marrick.

  ‘Yeah. You’re the only other Earl I’ve ever met apart from my brother.’

  ‘Well, it’s a pretty good name, I think.’

  ‘Are you famous?’ asked the boy.

  ‘No, I’m not famous,’ replied the peer.

  ‘Mrs Callaghan said you were famous.’

  ‘Have you heard of me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well then, I can’t be famous, can I?’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you can.’ Tony turned his attention to me. ‘Are you anybody, then?’ the boy asked.

  ‘No, I’m not anybody, either,’ I replied, amused by this interrogation.

  The boy, obviously unimpressed, turned back to Lord Marrick. ‘Mrs Callaghan said you were famous.’

  ‘Well, I’m very sorry to have to disappoint you, young man,’ Lord Marrick told him, ‘but she is sadly mistaken. I’m not famous at all.’

  ‘I brought my autograph book m specially,’ said the boy, looking disappointed.

  ‘I see,’ said Lord Marrick, scratching his outcrop of hair. ‘Well, would you like me to sign it?’

  ‘No, because you’re not famous. Well, it’s been nice meeting you. Now, I’ve got to get back to my class. Bye.’ He gave a wave and was gone.

  Lord Marrick laughed and turned to me. ‘I reckon that if Pope Pius himself walked through that door, he’d find it pretty difficult to get into that young man’s autograph book.’

  ‘Could I ask you something, Mr Marrick?’ came a small voice from behind us. We had forgotten all about Bernadette.

  ‘Of course you can, my dear,’ replied Lord Marrick. ‘If you don’t ask, you’ll never get to know.’

  ‘Is that moustache real, or have you put it on for today, it being a special occasion an’ all?’

  Lord Marrick and I now made our way to the staff room where the school governors were gathered with Mrs Callaghan and the teachers.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Phinn,’ said an elderly, quietly-spoken priest dressed in a cassock which had seen better days.

  ‘Good afternoon, Father.’

  ‘Delightful occasion, isn’t it?’ remarked the priest. ‘We have so much to be thankful for. I do hope you will personally convey our gratitude to Dr Gore and the Education Committee for making this possible. Such a beautiful new building, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, it’s very different from the old one. I don’t think it had ever crossed the original architect’s mind that it was a school he was designing and not a temporary army barracks.’

  ‘Ah well,’ said the priest, ‘one shouldn’t be too hard on him. I imagine he was constrained by financial considerations. I am sure that if money had been no object we would have had an attractive, spacious building. You see, the school was constructed, like so many post-war Catholic schools, largely as a result of the efforts of the Catholic community hereabouts who raised the money. I’m afraid it didn’t go far. It’s so good to see the Education Department taking such an active interest in the school and providing us with this wonderful building. I’m Father Leonard, by the way. I don’t think we’ve met.’

  ‘Ah, the Father Leonard!’ I cried. ‘You must be Monsignor Leonard’s brother.’

  The priest’s wrinkled face broke into a great grin. ‘Oh no, Mr Phinn, he’s mine!’

  Some time later, after having done my duty and talked to the governors, I joined Lord Marrick who was holding sway over a group of teachers. The subject under discussion appeared to be an interview which, a short time ago, would have depressed me immensely but now the black cloud had lifted and I was in a much better frame of mind. In fact, I was feeling positively buoyant.

  ‘I was just telling the present company, Mr Phinn,’ said Lord Marrick, moving his bulk to allow me to stand beside him, ‘that we were talking on the way over here this afternoon about the appointment of the new Senior Inspector and all those letters he has after his name. Father Leonard here was recalling that the headteacher before Mrs Callaghan had a similar string of qualifications.’

  ‘But you appointed me, Father,’ said Mrs Callaghan, ‘with just a teaching certificate and not a degree to my name.’

  ‘We did,’ said the priest, ‘and we certainly made the right decision. It’s not the qualifications that matter in the long run. It’s the calibre of the person. Indeed, the greatest teacher of all had no letters to His name.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Lord Marrick, ‘yes, indeed. I don’t mind saying, Mrs Callaghan, and you have heard me saying this on a number of occasions, that you run a cracking good school.’

  ‘And that was a cracking good assembly earlier on,’ I added. It had certainly given me food for thought.

  At the end of the school day, Lord Marrick cut a long length of bright blue ribbon fixed across the entrance to the hall, pulled a silk cord to uncover a plaque set in the wall, and made a short but elegant speech. Then, as the children sweetly sang some country songs, I sat blissfully listening to their clear, innocent voices whilst staring beyond them through the large picture window at the sweeping green dale beyond.

  One bright early June Saturday morning, Christine and I moved into Peewit Cottage, saying a thankful farewell to the flat over The Rumbling Tum café and the cooking smells that wafted malodorously up the stairs. The wood-worm and damp treatment on the cottage, the re-pointing, re-plastering and re-decorating had just about cleaned out our bank account but we couldn’t have been happier. The sun was shining, the birds were singing and we were so excited at the prospect of starting our married life in our very own home. I had hired a van on the previous Saturday and, with David’s help, had moved the bits of furniture which Christine had inherited from her great-aunt. There was a chest-of-drawers, rather worse for wear, two thread-bare easy chairs, a large drop-leaf dining table and six ladderback chairs. My sister had donated some pots and pans, carpets and curtains; my brother Michael had presented us with a sideboard and Sidney had arrived unannounced one evening at my flat with an assortment of cutlery, garden tools, shelves and rugs.

  ‘I’ve been having a clear out in the garage, dear boy,’ he had told me, ‘and thought some of these might come in handy.’

  The final article of furniture we needed to buy was a bed.

  The Sunday before we moved into the cottage, Christine and I spent a morning browsing around Roper’s Saleroom in Collington. Roper’s, auctioneers of fine quality furniture, paintings and effects, was housed in an impressive red-brick building set back from the road. The main room, where the auctions took place, was crammed with the most wonderful antique furniture: Regency mahogany sideboards, delicate inlaid rosewood tables, chiffoniers, satinwood desks, Edwardian wing armchairs, bow-fronted cupboards, Victorian balloon-backed chairs, Art Nouveau display cabinets, ornately-carved marble fire mantels and tall, highly-polished grandfather clocks. All of it was way out of our price range.

  And then we saw the bed. It took up an inordinate amount of space at the side of the saleroom and, surrounded by such exquisite furniture, looked amazingly plain and ugly with its dark oak headboard, thick buttoned mattress and heavy square legs.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a bit large,’ Christine replied, ‘and it’s not the most elegant of pieces, is it?’

  ‘Looks aren’t everything,’ I pointed out.

  ‘I’m not sure. Perhaps we ought to get a new one.’

  ‘It’s very comfortable,’ I told her, sitting on the thick mattress and bouncing up and down. ‘A modern bed wouldn’t fit in. A cottage the age of ours needs to have older furniture and this is really well-made. I can tell. It will last for ever, this bed.’

  ‘I have no doubt about that,’ Christine remarked, giving a wry
smile.

  ‘Well, shall we stay for the auction and see what it goes for? I mean, it will probably be well out of our price range anyway.’ When had we said that before? We should have learned by now.

  So we stayed for the auction and sat through item after item, most of which fetched an exorbitant price.

  ‘Ours is the next lot after this one,’ I whispered to Christine.

  ‘I really don’t know whether we should bid, Gervase,’ she said. ‘Are you really sure about this?’

  ‘Lot 367,’ the auctioneer intoned. ‘A unique nineteenth-century Louis XIV-style burr walnut and ebony banded cabinet with decorative stringing and ormolu mounts. This is a very special piece, ladies and gentlemen. I would ask you to note, in particular, the enchanting oval jasperwear plaques inset in the doors, the beautifully-turned pierced gallery back rails and the delightful gilt metal statuettes on the small plinths. The rope-twist beading and the mirrored back undershelf are, as you can see, in immaculate condition. Shall we start the bidding at say, £500?’ Bidding was brisk and the cabinet was soon sold.

  ‘Lot 368. A turn-of-the-century solidly constructed, iron-framed and impressively large bed in oak. Shall we start the bidding at £100?’

  ‘I am not sure about that bed,’ Christine said, later that evening. ‘I still think we should have gone for something more modern.’

  ‘Well, it’s too late now,’ I told her. ‘We’ve bought it and Roper’s are delivering it next Saturday. It may not be a Louis XIV masterpiece but I think we got a real bargain.’

  ‘By the time we’ve bought a new mattress, it won’t be so much of a bargain,’ said Christine, who had insisted we threw away the old mattress. ‘But, I agree, it’s a great bed.’

  The bed arrived the day we moved in. I was exchanging pleasantries with my neighbour, Harry Cotton, over the drystone wall when a huge dark-green removal van bearing the words ‘Roper’s Auctioneers of Distinction’ printed in gold lettering on the side drew up outside the cottage.

  ‘More furniture, then,’ observed Harry, scratching his shock of white hair. ‘At this rate, you won’t have room to swing a dormouse.’

  ‘Just a bed,’ I replied.

  ‘Aahh, well,’ he chuckled, tapping his beak of a nose and winking theatrically. ‘Tha’ll be needing a bed an’ no mistake. I reckon you and yer new missus’11 be putting that to good use, if tha follows my drift.’

  I did not wish to follow his drift and went to greet the three men in green overalls, with the Roper’s logo embroidered in yellow, who had just jumped out of the van.

  ‘Mr Phinn?’ asked a young man with closely-cropped, dyed blond hair and a large gold stud in his ear. ‘That’s right,’ I replied.

  ‘We’re here with the bed. Where do you want it?’

  ‘Where do you think he wants it?’ bayed Harry Cotton, shouting over the wall. ‘In my experience, beds go in t’bedrooms, sithee.’

  ‘OΚ, granddad,’ said the young man. ‘Keep your hair on. I was just asking.’ Then he asked Harry mischievously, ‘Are you going to give us a lift with it, then?’

  ‘Am I ‘ell as like,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a double hernia, me. Not a single one, mind, but a double, and t’eaviest thing I lift these days is a pint o’ bitter.’

  The three men, with my help, struggled and strained to get the bed out of the removal van and we dumped it at the door of the cottage. It looked gigantic.

  ‘It’s a fair old size,’ panted one of the men, sitting on the bed’s iron frame,

  ‘And a fair old weight, as well,’ added another, joining him.

  ‘Do you think you’ll get it through the door?’ I asked apprehensively. ‘It looks a lot bigger here than it did in the saleroom.’

  ‘We’ll get it in through the door, no trouble,’ said the young man with the short hair and the stud. ‘We can up-end it. Getting it up the stairs is a different matter altogether.’

  ‘Well, they got it down,’ said Harry as he observed proceedings from the wall. ‘So they must ‘ave got it up.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ I asked.

  Harry rubbed his chin and cocked his head in the direction of the cottage. ‘That theer bed what you ‘ave just bought, belonged to old Mrs Olleranshaw. It used to be in her front bedroom.’

  ‘Mrs Olleranshaw!’ I exclaimed. ‘The old lady who owned the cottage before us?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘But I thought you told me she had died two years ago.’

  ‘She did. It were her nephew, young Nigel, ‘im what came into her money. He only got around to selling her stuff at t’beginning of this year. Some of it went to Roper’s, I believe. Aye, that theer bed used to be in her front bed-room.’

  ‘And how would you know that then, granddad?’ asked the young man, smirking.

  ‘Well… I… er… er… I saw it being brought out when young Mr Olleranshaw sent it to t’saleroom.’

  ‘I believe you, granddad,’ said the young man, giving a theatrical wink. ‘Thousands wouldn’t. Come on then, lads, let’s give it a try.’ The two men rose from the bed. He turned to me. ‘We’ll need a bit of help up the stairs, if you don’t mind, so I hope you haven’t had a double hernia like old Casanova over there. By the way, you haven’t decorated yet, have you? It’s just that there might be a bit of manoeuvring to get it in the bedroom. These old cottages often have very narrow stairs.’

  ‘They do,’ agreed Harry who, having regained his composure, had moved from the wall and now stood by the cottage door, the better to observe proceedings. ‘And Peewit Cottage has some of t’narrowest, if my memory serves me right.’

  ‘Yes, I have just decorated,’ I told him, my heart sinking into my shoes. ‘Just last week.’

  ‘Well, I can’t promise we won’t chip your paintwork,’ he said.

  Mr Cotton was now perched on the bed, running his hand over the oak headboard.

  ‘Yes, this were Mrs Olleranshaw’s bed, all right. Nice piece of furniture, this.’ He chuckled, a long low chuckle. ‘It’s a rum do, i’n’t it? All that heffort gerrin’ it down and then it ‘as to go up ageean.’

  ‘Are you sure this is the same bed, Harry?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes, it’s t’same bed, sure as eggs is eggs. She was ill for a long time was Mrs Olleranshaw. Spent a deal of time in that there bed a-moanin’ and a-groanin’.’ He scratched his chin and nodded sagely. ‘Breathed her last in it an’ all.’

  At this point, Christine emerged from the cottage, looking radiant in the spring sunshine and smiling widely.

  ‘Ah, the bed,’ she said. ‘It’s arrived.’

  ‘I was just saying to your ‘usband, Mrs Phinn,’ said Harry. ‘This is the bed that old Mrs Olleranshaw died in.’

  16

  On a bright early June morning, I made my way to Barton Moor Parochial School, feeling on top of the world. Married life was seriously suiting me, I mused, and I whistled a little tune to confirm that I felt on top of the world. In fact, I thought, glancing at my watch, I had a little time to spare so I pulled into a gateway and climbed out of the car – I had borrowed Christine’s small Morris Minor since my car was in for service.

  I leaned on the gate and looked at the scene below me. The field, which fell away into Bartondale below, was full of contented grazing sheep, the warm morning sun falling on their newly-shorn backs. The sky was alive with darting swallows and the air with birdsong. I would have liked to have spent all day there, but I had a school to visit, so reluctantly I returned to the car and made my way to the small hamlet of Barton Moor.

  I swung into the small parking area and as I got out of the car I saw two boys aged about ten or eleven sitting on the school wall, watching me with some interest.

  ‘Hey up,’ said one as I approached.

  ‘Good morning,’ I replied, waving.

  ‘Grand day,’ said the other, screwing up his eyes and surveying the sky.

  ‘It is, a beautiful day.’

  The bigger of the two boys pointed a finge
r at the car and said, ‘I see tha got rid o’ t’hearse then.’ And I immediately remembered meeting the boys on my first visit to the school more than two years earlier.

  Snow had been falling heavily ever since I had left Fettle-sham, and I had thanked my lucky stars that I had been driving the large estate car that I had bought from my brother before moving north. Old and black – a ‘wardrobe on wheels’, as Sidney liked to call it – the vehicle was not the most attractive looking, but it was solid and heavy and ideal for driving in such hazardous conditions.

  I had felt a certain smugness as I had chugged slowly but surely up the ribbon of road, leaving behind me other vehicles unable to cope with the conditions. That morning, as I had clambered from the car, I had noticed two young lads watching me with great interest from their viewpoint on top of the school wall. They had been muffled up so thickly in woolly hats, thick coats and scarves that I had only seen two pairs of sharp dark eyes peering out at me. The two figures had looked like bundles of clothes one might see in the corner of a jumble sale.

  ‘Come for t’body, ‘as tha?’ one of the boys had asked me, pointing a gloved finger at the car.

  ‘Pardon?’ I had replied, shivering in the cold air.

  ‘For t’body. To tek away in t’hearse.’

  ‘No, no,’ I had said, laughing. ‘I’ve not come for the body and my car isn’t a hearse.’

  ‘Looks like an ‘earse,’ the larger of the two had commented. ‘I bet tha could get a body in t’back wi’out any trouble at all.’

  ‘Tha could get a pair of ‘em in theer,’ his small companion had added.

  ‘I suppose I could,’ I had replied, ‘but I’m not here for a body.’

  ‘Are thy ‘ere to fix t’frozzen pipes in t’lads’ lavs, then?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Pity. We’ve been crossin’ us legs all week, ‘aven’t we, Roge?’