Head Over Heels in the Dales

by Gervase Phinn

  ‘Couldn’t be better, Lord Marrick,’ I replied. ‘And what about you?’

  ‘Bloody excellent! Rum do this about Dr Yeats’s successor, eh?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve just been talking about that.’

  ‘Fellow upped and went like a fox with the hounds at his heels, I hear.’ He fingered the top of his walking stick. ‘Didn’t take to him myself. Clever man, no doubt about that, but far too much to say. Anyhow, how’s married life treating you?’

  ‘Marvellous! Best thing I ever did,’ I said, meaning every word of it.

  ‘Well, let’s have a drink in the beer tent later to celebrate the good things of life – but we’ve got to get this judging over and done with. Shouldn’t be a long job, should it?’ He didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Any sign of the patter of tiny feet yet, eh?’ He was nothing if not blunt.

  I would have loved to have told him. ‘Not yet,’ I lied.

  ‘Well, you haven’t had much time yet. Now, come along then, let’s get this verse-reading show on the road, shall we?’

  On our way to the tent I was treated to a running commentary. ‘Margot Cleaver-Canning is joining us. I know you’ve met Margot and her long-suffering husband. He’s a martyr is old Winco. Mind you, Margot is a splendid woman – feisty, I should say. Salt of the earth. Calls a spade a shovel.’ He stopped at the entrance to the tent and took my arm. ‘My goodness, you should have seen her out hunting. She could hold her own with the best when she was out with the Totterdale. Never seen a more fearless jumper than Margot Cleaver-Canning – although, of course, that was before she carried the extra baggage, if you see what I mean. She’d gallop up to this drystone wall and if her mount refused, she’d sort of put her horse in reverse and the beast would kick down the bloody wall to let her through. Trained him to do it, she did. Nothing would stop her. All end of trouble her father had getting her out of such scrapes. And if you see her on the golf course, she’s a veritable virago. Women like that are the backbone of Britain. Great-grand-daughter of General Cleaver-Boiling of the 12th Royal Lancers, you know. All in the bloodline.’

  Mrs Cleaver-Canning was waiting for us in the tent. She was dressed in a shapeless multicoloured cotton tent of a dress, a huge red hat and wore pristine white gloves.

  ‘Now then, Margot, my dear,’ boomed Lord Marrick, ‘how are you?’

  ‘I’m very well thank you, Bunny,’ she replied, ‘and I see you’re looking well.’

  Bunny? I said to myself. Bunny! I looked at the rotund, red-cheeked character with his great walrus moustache and his hair shooting up from a square head. It would be difficult to find anyone who looked less like a rabbit than he.

  ‘I’m as fit as a butcher’s dog,’ growled the peer. ‘And look who I’ve found outside.’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Phinn,’ said Mrs Cleaver-Canning, extending a gloved hand regally.

  ‘Good morning,’ I replied. ‘It’s very nice to see you again. Is… er… Winco here too?’

  ‘Good gracious, no! I’ve sent him off. Winco knows as much about poetry as I do about the Messerschmitts he used to shoot down. He’ll be in the beer tent if I know Winco, regaling anyone who will listen to him about his war exploits. Now, Mr Phinn, Lord Marrick and I are relying on you to help us though this judging how-de-do. I was approached to do this as President of my local branch of the W.I. and, although I am very happy to oblige and I do have some limited experience in this field, I have never judged children before.’

  ‘And I don’t know a bloody thing about poetry,’ added Lord Marrick. ‘Pardon my French. However, I am sure Gervase here will tell us what to do, Margot, so I wouldn’t worry. It seems pretty straightforward, as far as I can see. We listen to a few kiddies performing their poems and pick the winners.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ I said. ‘But very often it is the parents who cause the problems, not the children.’ I had a niggling feeling that this was going to be a re-run of the disastrous poetry competition and as the morning progressed that feeling grew.

  Five small square staging blocks had been pushed together to form a makeshift stage at the end of the marquee, facing the judges’ table. Behind us was row upon row of wooden chairs for the audience to sit on. The area would have looked a little more cheerful and welcoming had someone had the foresight to paint or drape the blocks in bright colours and put a few colourful plants here and there. As it was, it looked a rather drab environment for the children to present their poems.

  The organiser of the event was an amiable but completely disorganised man with a soft voice and an absent-minded expression. He had the irritating habit of biting his bottom lip and punctuating all his replies to my questions with, ‘Well, what do you think, Mr Phinn?’ I checked that there was the requisite number of book tokens and rosettes to award, agreed to introduce the event and that Lord Marrick would present the prizes.

  I went in search of the showground announcer to ask him to inform the public over his loudspeaker that the verse-speaking competition would be taking place in thirty minutes. This had never occurred to the organiser. I could visualise the children presenting their poems to an empty marquee.

  On the way back, I diverted to the Education Tent, which was already exceedingly busy, but I managed to attract Mrs Savage’s attention.

  ‘Might I borrow a few of your plants? I will bring them back very soon,’ I said and without giving the woman a chance to object, I scooped up four big pots from in front of her table, gave her a cheesy grin and left quickly, ignoring her little bleats of ‘Mr Phinn, Mr Phinn.’

  When I arrived back in the marquee, I found to my surprise that the place was filling up fast. Things seemed to be looking up, I thought, as I placed the pots of flowers in front of the little stage. All the entrants had arrived, been told the order of their appearance and the judges had a full list of poems for recitation with names of all the children. At 11.30 on the dot, I welcomed the audience, told them what a treat was in store and introduced myself and my fellow judges. I then asked for the first child to deliver his piece.

  Onto the rostrum clambered a nervous-looking boy with a startled expression. He entertained us with a laboured rendering of ‘The Highwayman’, prompted frequently by a parent who followed his progress in a large book from the side of the stage. After him came a large girl who gave a most original performance of ‘Daffodils’ by William Words-worth. Dressed in a bright yellow dress, she took to floating around the stage like a cloud, waving her arms in the air, miming the fluttering and the dancing of the flowers in the breeze and all the while reciting the verse in a loud sing-song voice. When she got to the lines: ‘For oft, when on my couch I lie, In vacant or in pensive mood’, she clapped her hand to her forehead dramatically as though suffering from a particularly painful migraine and put on a face which was neither vacant nor pensive. The remarkably thin youth who followed her mounted the stage with amiable lankiness and managed to deliver a piece of Shakespeare as if he were recalling a shopping list. Next was an older girl, dressed in a Victorian-style dress with lace-up boots, who accompanied her rendering of ‘The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God’ with the most elaborate movements and facial expressions. She pointed towards the audience, grimaced as if the boots she was wearing were too tight and belted out the lines with gusto.

  And so the performances went on and on until the pen-ultimate entrant strode to the stage like a giraffe. My heart sank. It was Pollyanna Phillpots. When I had judged the ill-fated poetry competition two years before, one of the entrants was the daughter of the Dales poetess, Philomena Phillpots. Pollyanna, at the time, had been a miniature replica of her mother: thin, gaunt-looking with waist-length sandy hair and dressed identically in a long, flowered-print dress. The child had produced a trite little verse about gambolling lambs and fluffy white sheep and she and her mother had not been best pleased when it failed to win a prize. Now here she was again, a great deal taller, and I had an unnerving feeling that in the audience somewhere was the Dales poetess herself, watching me like a h
awk. I had heard that the poetry competition, which Philomena Phill-pots would be judging, would be taking place at three o’clock and had made a mental note to give that event a wide birth.

  ‘The poem I am going to recite,’ started the girl in the bland tones of an undertaker giving his condolences, ‘has been written by my mother, the famous Dales poetess, Philomena Phillpots.’ There was a favourable murmur from the audience. ‘It is called, “In the Country”.

  If you are in the country

  Well, don’t just walk on by,

  But stay awhile, squat on a stile

  And sit beneath the sky.

  In this very busy world

  A world that’s full of care

  We never give ourselves

  The time to really stop and stare,

  To listen to the country sounds

  That fill the morning air.

  Hear the little beck a-gurgling

  See the great dark river burbling

  Feel the whispering wind a-teasing

  See the winter puddles freezing

  Hear the peewit’s plaintive calling

  See the gentle snow a-falling…

  I found myself switching off; the mention of the peewit made me think of our cottage, of Christine, and the news that I was keeping close to my heart.

  I came to with a start when, the poem evidently having finally ended, there was a ripple of applause and some exceptionally loud clapping from the back. I didn’t need to turn round. I could see in my mind’s eye a thin, gaunt-looking woman with waist-length sandy hair and dressed in a long, flowered-print dress. Pollyanna gave a little bow and loped off the stage.

  The final entrant, a sharp-faced boy of about ten with a scattering of freckles and wavy red hair, clambered on the rostrum.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ I murmured to myself. It was little Terry Mossup of Willingforth School. Miss Pilkington must have worked wonders to have persuaded him to perform.

  ‘This piece of Yorkshire dialect verse was written in 1909 by Ben Turner,’ said the boy in a clear, loud and confident voice. Then, looking directly at our judging table and the audience behind us, he began his poem:

  Whativer task you tackle, lads,

  Whativer job you do,

  I’ all your ways,

  I’ all your days,

  Be honest through and through:

  Play cricket.

  If claads oppress you wi’ their gloom,

  An’ t’sun seems lost to view,

  Don’t fret an’ whine,

  Ask t’sun to shine,

  An’ don’t o’ livin’ rue:

  Play cricket.

  If you’re i’ debt, don’t growl and grunt,

  An’ wish at others had

  T’same want o’ luck;

  But show more pluck,

  An’ ne’er mak others sad:

  Play cricket.

  If in your days there’s chonce to do

  Good deeds, then reight an’ fair,

  Don’t hesitate,

  An’ wait too late,

  An’ say you’n done your share:

  Play cricket.

  We’ve all a row to hoe, that’s true,

  Let’s do it best we can;

  It’s nobbut once

  We have the chonce

  To play on earth the man:

  Play cricket.

  The judges retired to the tea tent to deliberate.

  ‘Well, I reckon this is going to be a long business,’ said Lord Marrick, stroking his moustache. ‘I mean there was a lot of talent there, a lot of talent.’

  ‘And some very interesting, not to say unusual renderings,’ added Mrs Cleaver-Canning. ‘I thought the girl doing the mime to the “Daffodils” was going to fall off the stage at one point. If I didn’t know better I should say she’d been on the cider. She did very well to keep her balance and continue to say the words. And another thing, if I were the mother of the young man reciting that Shakespeare, I would be extremely worried about his health. He looked unnaturally thin to me. Anorexic I should say.’

  ‘Yes, well it’s the poems we’re here about, Margot, not the state of the entrants’ health.’

  ‘My father, God rest his soul,’ continued Mrs Cleaver-Canning, ‘used to give a very impressive rendering of “The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God” with all the actions. It brought back many a pleasant Christmas at Cleaver Hall, that poem.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to put my cards on the table,’ announced Lord Marrick. ‘I thought one stood out head and shoulders above the rest.’

  ‘Yes, there was one I liked very much more than the others,’ agreed Mrs Cleaver-Canning.

  ‘So,’ said Lord Marrick, ‘how are we going to play this, then, Gervase? Shall we go through them one by one and compare our marks?’

  ‘I, too, have my favourite,’ I said, but didn’t reckon that my two colleagues would agree. ‘Of course, we are not judging the content of the poems, it’s the performance, the presentation, use of the voice, timing, expression, how the words are interpreted, that sort of thing, Perhaps we should start by saying who each of us thinks is the best.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Lord Marrick. ‘I’ll go first. Never been one to be backwards in coming forwards, as my gamekeeper tells me often enough. The cheeky-faced little lad at the end. I thought he was the best. Not a line fluffed, good strong voice, bags of confidence and he got the dialect off to a turn. That’s my opinion, for what it is worth.’

  ‘Well, that’s two of us,’ said Mrs Cleaver-Canning. ‘I loved the poem. My father was a stalwart of the Yorkshire Dialect Society for many years and was a great one for encouraging the production of Yorkshire dialect literature. I did think the little boy gave of his best. He was a delight.’

  ‘This is not going to be protracted at all,’ I said with a great sense of relief and satisfaction. ‘I too think the last entrant was the best.’

  ‘Great Scot!’ exclaimed Lord Marrick. ‘We are unanimous.’

  Little Terry Mossup jumped up onto the stage to receive his first prize. He beamed as he took the book token and rosette from Lord Marrick before thanking him. ‘Cheers mate,’ he said, giving the peer a wink and a thumbs up. He then faced the audience and, with a triumphant look, clenched a fist, punched the air and shouted, ‘Yeah!’ like a footballer who had just scored the winning goal.

  Later that afternoon, I sat with Christine at a table in the sunshine outside the tea tent. I was so happy. We had had a delicious lunch, and then spent our money rather haphazardly. Christine had bought a stack of saucepans, and a patchwork throw for the bed, and I had fallen for a beautifully-made bird table which I thought would look great in the garden of Peewit Cottage. With our purchases piled on the ground beside us, we were now indulging ourselves with a cream tea.

  ‘Got to eat for two, now,’ said Christine, her eyes sparkling. ‘But that doesn’t mean you have to as well,’ and she took the last bit of scone off my plate and popped it into her mouth with a grin.

  At that moment, a small boy with ice cream smeared round his mouth and a cone nearly the size of his head walked past.

  ‘Hey, Terry,’ I called. ‘Well done winning the competition. You did really well.’

  The boy came across to where we were sitting. ‘Aye,’ he agreed. ‘I didn’t do too bad, did I?’

  ‘This is the winner of the verse-speaking competition,’ I told Christine.

  ‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘You must have been very good.’

  ‘I was all right,’ replied the boy, taking a great lick of his ice cream.

  ‘And are you liking school a bit better now?’ I asked.

  ‘Naw, not really,’ he replied. ‘I wunt go if it was left to me.’

  ‘And are you behaving yourself?’ I asked.

  ‘Allus do,’ he replied, with a twinkle in the eye.

  ‘And how’s the football?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Did you get into the Junior Side, then?’

  �
��Naw, they din’t want me, but it’s not end o’ t’world, is it?’

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘And you can always try again next year.’

  ‘’Appen I can,’ he replied, taking another immense lick of the ice cream. ‘Is this your girl friend, then?’ he asked, nodding in the direction of Christine.

  ‘No, this is my wife.’

  ‘Have you got any kids?’

  ‘No, we haven’t any children,’ I replied, smiling.

  ‘Mi mum – mi real mum – says they’re more trouble than they’re worth, are kids.’ He sniffed and took another lick. ‘’Appen she’s reight.’ He thought for a moment. ‘It’s not been a bad day this, ‘as it?’

  ‘No, it’s not been a bad day,’ I agreed. ‘And what have you been learning at school then, Terry?’

  ‘Not much,’ he answered. Then after a thoughtful pause, he announced, ‘I do know how to mek babies, though.’

  Christine choked on the tea she was just at that moment drinking, and coughed and spluttered it all over me, herself and the table. Here we go again, I thought to myself: the inquisitive child who asks a tricky question or regales you with an embarrassingly blunt observation. I prepared myself to smile widely, nod sagely and be as evasive as possible. I tried not to look in the least shocked and replied in a very casual voice, ‘Really?’

  ‘Aye I do. I’ve just learnt how to mek babies.’ He gave his ice cream cone another elaborate lick. ‘Do you know how to mek babies then?’ he asked.

  ‘I do, yes,’ I replied and looked over to Christine who was holding a handkerchief to her mouth in an attempt to smother her laughter.

  There was another long pause. ‘How do you mek babies, then?’ the boy asked, looking me straight in the eye.

  ‘You go first,’ I told him.

  ‘Well,’ he said, looking up at the cloudless blue sky, ‘I knock the “y” off and add “i-e-s”. Is that how you make babies, then?’

  ‘Exactly,’ I replied and, putting my arms around the mother-to-be, I gave Christine a great hug and a kiss.