05 Please Sir!

by Jack Sheffield

‘And I’ll bring the report so maybe you could check it through for me.’

  ‘Delighted,’ I said.

  There was a long silence. ‘And we need to talk,’ she added.

  On Saturday evening darkness was falling and, in the evening breeze, the high elms were restless. On Morton Road bats swooped with blind confidence around the silent tower of St Mary’s Church. Vera closed the lounge curtains in the vicarage and, shortly before seven o’clock, switched on BBC2 and settled down to watch the Leeds International Piano Competition. However, by the time the sixth finalist performed, her mind was elsewhere and she knew there was something she must do.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, at Bilbo Cottage, after a wonderful meal, Beth and I settled down with a bottle of wine to watch episode three of John Le Carré’s spy thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The portrayal of the mole-catcher, George Smiley, by Alec Guinness had proved compulsive viewing for us and we relaxed together on the sofa in front of my first log fire of the season.

  An hour later we stood together in the kitchen and I washed the casserole dish while Beth made some coffee. With her perfect complexion and honey-blonde hair and dressed in jeans and a baggy woollen sweater that merely enhanced her slim figure, I wondered how she could ever have wanted an awkward, bespectacled Yorkshireman like me. Nervously, I tried to flatten the palm-tree tuft of brown hair that refused to lie down on the crown of my head. From the empty lounge, I could hear a television interview with Ron Atkinson, manager of Manchester United. He wanted George Best to return to the club but it was my return to Ragley School that was uppermost in my mind. It was this decision that had caused tension between Beth and me.

  Our recent conversations had become a collection of silences. I could see the ghosts of what we might become: silent partners in a comedy of manners, acting our parts in perfect harmony but never choosing our own pathway. There was distance between us. It was time to talk.

  We took our coffee into the lounge and I switched off the television.

  ‘Beth … I know you were disappointed in me when I pulled out of the chance to go for the bigger headship.’

  ‘A little,’ she said quietly and sipped her coffee.

  ‘When I knew Ragley wasn’t one of the small schools selected for closure, I was so relieved.’

  ‘I know, Jack.’

  ‘And I love my work. I’m really happy at Ragley.’

  ‘As I am at Hartingdale, Jack, but I don’t anticipate being there for ever.’

  ‘I understand that, Beth.’

  She replaced her coffee cup and went to stand by the fire. ‘It’s just that I thought we had similar ambitions,’ she said as she stared into the flames.

  I went to stand beside her in the flickering light. ‘That’s why we need to talk,’ I said. Beth was silent. ‘You see, I don’t want to be a disappointment to you, Beth … not any more.’

  She turned to face me. ‘What exactly are you trying to say, Jack?’

  I held her hands in mine and took a deep breath. ‘Beth … I’ll understand if you want to break off the engagement.’

  There was a shocked expression on her face followed by confusion. ‘Oh, Jack … Jack.’ She put her arms round my waist and held me tightly. Her hair was soft against my cheek. ‘You are the man I want for my husband. How could you ever doubt that?’

  ‘But we’ve been drifting for so long now, Beth, and I thought you might want to find someone, well, better than I am, someone who will achieve in the way you want them to succeed.’

  She looked up at me with a firm intensity. ‘Jack, even though I was disappointed when you decided not to go for the new headship, I could never be disappointed in you as a person … as a man.’ Then she lifted her head and kissed me tenderly on the lips.

  ‘It’s just that we’ve not spoken about the wedding for ages,’ I said. ‘I thought you were avoiding it.’

  ‘Jack,’ she said, ‘look at me and believe it: you are the man I want to marry.’

  I felt as though a weight had been lifted from my heart. ‘Beth … I love you.’ I put my arms around her as if I never, ever, wanted to let her go. Then we kissed again … and again.

  ‘And I love you, Jack … so why don’t we plan a wedding?’

  ‘When?’ I asked eagerly.

  ‘How about now?’ replied Beth.

  ‘But it’s late and I’m tired,’ I said with a grin.

  ‘Then let’s have this conversation somewhere else,’ she said with a wide-eyed stare. ‘I’ve been thinking about hotels and wedding dresses and dates … and churches – for example, Yorkshire or Hampshire … In fact, your place or mine, Mr Sheffield?’ She took my hand, turned out the light and led the way to the foot of the stairs.

  On Sunday the weather was cooler and the first fires of autumn had been lit in the cottages of Ragley village. As Vera drove down the High Street, long streamers of woodsmoke were being tugged by a gentle breeze into a slate-blue sky. She glanced at her wristwatch. There was time for a final rendezvous and, as the miles raced by, she rehearsed her words carefully. Twenty minutes later, the sheer magnificence of York Minster came into sight, towering like a sleeping giant above the rooftops and snickleways of York. By the time she drove into the station car park she allowed herself a reflective, enigmatic smile.

  Then she parked and looked at the clock. There was time to speak to Hedley but what was there to say? It was over and had been for a long time. In fact, it had barely begun. Now there was a wonderful man in her life. She put her hand in her coat pocket and read the invitation from Rupert once again.

  And, as she waited, she smiled. There really was a difference between infatuation and true love … and she knew what it was.

  Chapter Three

  Ruby and the Butlin’s Redcoat

  Following a meeting with the school governors, permission has been granted by County Hall for Mrs Smith’s caretaking duties to be extended by four hours per week.

  Extract from the Ragley School Logbook:

  Friday, 9 October 1981

  ‘All the sixes, sixty-six,’ announced the confident bingo caller as he flicked a comb through his Billy Fury quiff.

  ‘You’ve got that one, Ruby,’ whispered Betty Buttle, but Ruby looked preoccupied.

  ‘Key of the door, twenty-one,’ reverberated the voice from the giant speakers.

  ‘An’ that one, Ruby. C’mon, wekken up,’ muttered Margery Ackroyd.

  Ruby crossed off the numbers on her bingo card but her mind was elsewhere.

  ‘Downing Street, number ten.’

  The ladies of Ragley and Morton sat round their tables in the Ragley village hall as the excitement increased. It was Thursday evening, 8 October, and the monthly bingo night was in full swing.

  ‘Ah’d know that voice anywhere,’ murmured Ruby almost to herself, a far-away look in her eyes.

  ‘Two little ducks, twenty-two,’ said the man with the faded red jacket and twinkling blue eyes.

  ‘Ah’m sweatin’ on eighty-eight,’ said Julie Earnshaw.

  ‘Yours and mine, sixty-nine,’ boomed the voice again.

  ‘Ah’m sweatin’ an’ all,’ said Margery as she crossed off the penultimate number.

  ‘Legs … eee-leven.’

  ‘Ah knew it,’ said Ruby, ‘it’s ’im … Well, ah never did, would y’believe it?’

  ‘Seventy-seven, Sunset Strip. C’mon, ladies, somebody’s got t’be close to a full’ouse.’

  Ruby didn’t cross off number seventy-seven. She was staring at the only man in the hall.

  ‘Two fat ladies, eighty-eight,’ he cried.

  ‘’Ouse!’ yelled Betty, waving her completed bingo card in the air.

  ‘We’ave a lucky lady on t’corner table,’ said the tall, lean, chain-smoking fifty-year-old bingo caller. He stood up and waved at the group of ladies on Betty’s table. ‘Shout out y’numbers, luv, an’ we’ll check y’card.’ Then he stared and went silent. ‘Ruby,’ he said quietly but forgetting his microphone was switc
hed on.

  ‘Does’e know you?’ asked Margery.

  ‘Glory be,’ muttered Ruby, ‘it is ’im. Ah’d know that voice anywhere.’

  ‘Who’s’im?’ whispered Julie Earnshaw, for whom curiosity and correct grammar were not constant companions.

  ‘After all these years,’ said Ruby quietly.

  ‘So … who is’e?’ asked all the ladies at once.

  Ruby smiled and put down her pencil. ‘It’s Seaside Johnny.’

  Outside the staff-room window Friday had dawned bright and clear. It was a perfect autumn morning. The season was changing and the leaves were tinged with gold. In the hedgerows busy spiders were making their intricate webs, robins and wrens were claiming their territory, while goldfinches pecked the ripe seeds from the teasels. It was 8.30 a.m. and, in the corridor outside the school office, the sound of Ruby singing ‘Edelweiss’ from her favourite musical, The Sound of Music, was distinctly louder than usual.

  I smoothed some sticky-backed plastic over the fraying edges of a white card on which the one hundred words of the ‘Schonell Word Recognition Test’ were neatly printed. ‘Ruby sounds cheerful,’ I said.

  Vera looked up from her pile of Yorkshire Purchasing Organization order forms and smiled. ‘It’s good to hear, Mr Sheffield. She’s been a bit down lately.’

  Suddenly there was the clatter of a galvanized bucket followed by a tap on the door and there stood Ruby. ‘G’morning, Mr Sheffield, Miss Evans,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Ah’m trying t’finish a bit smartish this morning, if y’please.’

  Ruby Smith weighed over twenty stones and her extra-large double X, bright-orange overall was tightly fastened over her plump frame as she pushed a few strands of damp, wavy, chestnut hair away from her eyes.

  ‘That’s fine, Ruby,’ I said.

  Vera always took a kindly interest in our good-hearted and hard-working school caretaker. ‘Don’t overdo it, Ruby,’ she said, ‘especially now the governors have granted those extra hours for you.’

  ‘Ah’m fine, thank you, Miss Evans – reight as rain,’ said Ruby as, absent-mindedly, she took out a soft cloth from her overall pocket and began to polish the door handle. ‘It’s jus’ that sometimes ah want t’world t’slow down a bit,’ she said, ‘an’ then ah can catch up, so t’speak.’

  ‘So, Ruby … are you doing something special with Ronnie?’ I asked, more in hope than expectation.

  Ruby looked down at the door handle and the polishing slowed down to a standstill. ‘Y’jokin’, Mr Sheffield. Ah’m spittin’ feathers wi’ ’im. ’E won’t get off ‘is backside – sez’e’s gorra cold.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I said lamely.

  ‘Anyway, Diane’s doing me ‘air at nine o’clock an’ then ah said ah’d meet an old friend later in t’Coffee Shop.’

  Vera looked up again with interest. ‘Oh, who’s that, Ruby?’

  ‘Seaside Johnny, Miss Evans.’

  ‘Seaside Johnny?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, Mr Sheffield,’ said Ruby. ‘’E were t’new bingo caller las’ night an’ ah’ve not seen’im f’years.’E used t’work at Butlin’s back in t’sixties.’ She resumed polishing the door handle thoughtfully. ‘An’ ’e’s jus’ come back t’live in Easington an’ opened a second-’and shop. Do y’remember’im, Miss Evans?’

  ‘I certainly do, Ruby,’ said Vera. ‘He used to have a stall on Thirkby market selling old paintings and bric-à-brac.’

  ‘That’s reight,’ said Ruby with a smile. ‘’E loved ’is art, did Johnny.’E’ad pictures all round’is’ouse – Wrestler’s Mother, Laughing Chandelier,’e’d gorrem all.’ With that she picked up the wickerwork basket from under my desk, emptied the offcuts of sticky-backed plastic and torn manila envelopes into her black bag and dragged it out into the corridor.

  When the door was closed, Vera resumed checking the carbon copy of an order form for large tins of powder paint and bristle brushes. Quietly, she murmured, ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Problem, Vera?’ I asked.

  Vera didn’t look up. ‘No, Mr Sheffield … Well, I hope not.’

  Morning school went well. In my class, ten-year-old Sarah Louise Tait wrote a wonderful poem, Debbie Clack’s reading age caught up with her chronological age and Theresa Buttle finally cracked long multiplication. However, in Jo Hunter’s class, life wasn’t quite so smooth and a dispute had broken out.

  ‘Oh, Terry!’ exclaimed Jo.

  ‘Ah never took’er pen, Miss,’ pleaded Terry Earnshaw.

  Jo shook her head sadly at the absence of correct grammar. ‘No, Terry: I didn’t take her pen.’

  ‘That meks two of us what never took it, Miss,’ said Terry, quick as a flash.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Jo. ‘Come on, girls and boys, back to our health education lesson … Now, who can remember, what are the bowels?’

  Benjamin Roberts immediately raised his hand. ‘A, E, I, O, U,’ he shouted eagerly.

  Jo sighed deeply. ‘A good try, Benjamin,’ she said, ‘but … actually …’

  In the High Street, Ruby had enjoyed a relaxing morning in Diane’s Hair Salon. After deciding on a cut-price ‘Farrah Fawcett’, she had set off back to school wearing her favourite headscarf and feeling as though she had just got eight draws on Littlewood’s pools. Although it crossed her mind that Farrah Fawcett didn’t have to mop the hall floor and put the dining tables out, she was grateful that her caretaker’s contract had been increased by an extra four hours per week and she knew the money would come in handy to feed her large family.

  Finally, at half past twelve, Ruby hung up her overall in the caretaker’s store, tightened the knot on her headscarf and tapped lightly on the open staff-room door. ‘’Scuse me, Miss Evans,’ she said.

  Vera looked up from her Daily Telegraph crossword. ‘That’s all right, Ruby,’ said Vera. ‘I was just studying this anagram.’

  For a moment, Ruby was puzzled. She hadn’t seen Ted the postman deliver any anagrams that morning.

  ‘Ah’ll be getting off, if it please, Miss Evans,’ said Ruby. ‘Ah need t’check on my Ronnie.’

  ‘Why is that, Ruby?’

  ‘’E’s got one o’ them colds that men get.’

  ‘I see,’ said Vera. ‘So … just a sniffle then.’

  ‘That’s reight, Miss Evans.’

  ‘Any sign of a job on the horizon?’

  ‘My Ronnie’ll never knuckle down an’ get a proper job, Miss Evans. It’s not in ‘is nature,’ said Ruby. ‘Ah know that now.’

  ‘Oh dear, Ruby, I’m so sorry.’

  Ruby shook her head. ‘Sometimes ah wish’e would sling’is’ook, but then ah took’im f’better o’ worse, so ah’m stuck wi’ ’im.’

  ‘But how do you,’ Vera searched for the right word, ‘… feel about him, Ruby?’

  ‘Well … ah do luv’im, Miss Evans – allus’ave, allus will. M’mother used t’say y’can’t pick who y’love, it picks you.’

  Vera smiled. ‘She’s a wise lady, Ruby.’

  ‘She is that … Well, ah’ll be off then, Miss Evans. See y’later.’

  ‘OK, Ruby.’ Vera shook her head sadly and wondered what would become of her downtrodden friend. She really did need something to cheer her up.

  Ruby was deep in thought as she walked down the cobbled school drive. The distant forest at the foot of the Hambleton hills glowed with autumn gold but Ruby was too preoccupied to notice. She knew that her unemployed husband, Ronnie, would continue to drink the same considerable volume of beer regardless of the cost. To make matters worse, there was talk that Miss Golightly in the General Stores & Newsagent was about to raise the price of a loaf of bread to thirty-one pence. The outlook for Ruby and her family looked bleak. As she closed the school gates and turned towards home, Jo Hunter and Vera watched her from the staff-room window.

  ‘I feel so sorry for Ruby,’ said Jo sadly.

  ‘So do I,’ said Vera. ‘She needs something to lift her spirits.’

  Our forty-eight-year-old caretaker was married to u
nemployed Ronnie, whose life revolved around his racing pigeons, the bookmaker and Tetley’s bitter. They had six children. ‘The first’n’ last were accidents but ah love’em all,’ she had once said. Her elder son, thirty-year-old Andy, was in the army and her eldest daughter, twenty-eight-year-old Racquel, lived in York with her husband, a factory storeman. Racquel worked as a packer in the Joseph Rowntree chocolate factory and every Friday she delivered a free bag of Lion bars to her mother. ‘’Ere’s y’little treat, Mam,’ Racquel would say and Ruby would give her a hug and an expectant look. ‘An’ no, Mam, ah’m not pregnant.’ Then Ruby would go into her cluttered kitchen to make a mug of tea and pray that one day she would be blessed with a grandchild.

  Ruby and Ronnie shared their council house at number 7 School View with their other four children. Duggie, a twenty-six-year-old undertaker’s assistant with the nickname ‘Deadly’, was content smoking his Castella cigars, playing with his Hornby Dublo train set and sleeping on his little wooden bunk in the attic; twenty-one-year-old Sharon had just got engaged to the local blond-haired adonis Rodney Morgetroyd, the Morton village milkman; nineteen-year-old Natasha was an assistant in Diane’s Hair Salon, and eight-year-old Hazel, a happy, rosy-cheeked little girl, had just moved up into Sally Pringle’s class.

  As Ruby made her way home, she wondered if her life would always be one of toil in order to keep her family fed and healthy. There were too many days now when her bones ached and she simply wanted to sit down and shut out the world.

  When she walked into her house, the sight that met her eyes was a long way from the elegant Christopher Plummer asking the demure Julie Andrews to dance.

  ‘Ah’m proper poorly, Ruby,’ complained frail, skinny Ronnie as he sat in the kitchen with a sweaty sock round his neck, a bread poultice on his chest and his feet in a bucket of hot mustard water. ‘An’ ah’m sweatin’ cobs,’ he gasped. ‘Ah feel as though ah’ve gone three rounds wi’ Giant ‘Aystacks.’

  Ruby ignored his plaintive cries and took a tin of sucking Victory V lozenges from the cupboard, rubbed off the dust from the lid on Ronnie’s bobble hat and popped a sweet into his mouth. ‘Suck that, y’soft ha’porth, an’ shurrup!’ said Ruby and went upstairs to find her best dress. ‘Ah’m goin’ out.’