03 Dear Teacher

by Jack Sheffield

  By morning break the staff-room was so full of costumes, shepherds’ crooks and kitchen-foil crowns that, in spite of the temperature dropping like a stone and the forecast of snow, it was a relief to do playground duty. I was warming my hands on my mug of coffee when I noticed Jimmy Poole standing by the cycle shed. He looked dejected, so I walked over to him.

  ‘What’s the matter, Jimmy?’ I asked.

  ‘Thpartacuth hath gone, Mr Theffield,’ said Jimmy mournfully.

  ‘Spartacus?’

  ‘Yeth. Ah tied ’im up ’ere an’ he’th gone.’

  I remembered the turkey. ‘Is Spartacus a turkey?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeth, Mr Theffield,’ said Jimmy, totally unimpressed by my powers of deduction.

  ‘You’ve got a turkey called Spartacus?’

  ‘Yeth. Cauth of that thtory you told uth in athembly.’

  I recalled I had just related the epic story of Spartacus the slave. ‘And why did you bring him to school, Jimmy?’

  ‘Ah’m trying to thtop Thpartacus getting killed for Chrithmath, Mr Theffield, cauth he’th my friend ’an’ ah feel thorry for ’im.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll find him,’ I said unconvincingly and Jimmy walked back into class. I took a quick look round the cycle shed, but the limping turkey and the length of baling twine had disappeared. Spartacus was a free turkey.

  Back in my classroom two of the mothers, Staff Nurse Sue Phillips and Margery Ackroyd, had called in to make glittery Abba outfits, while I helped ten-year-old Katy Ollerenshaw prepare a compilation of Christmas carols on our Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder. It was noticeable that, compared with me, Katy was much more competent.

  At twelve o’clock, Jungle Telegraph Jodie made an announcement. ‘Vicar’s coming up t’drive, Mr Sheffield, an’ ’e’s walkin’ funny.’ It was true. The Revd Joseph Evans was walking like a man wearing sandpaper underpants. I went to meet him in the entrance hall.

  ‘Come into the staff-room, Joseph, and sit down,’ I said, clearing colourful parcels of gold, frankincense and myrrh from the nearest chair.

  Joseph gave me a strained look. ‘I’d rather not, Jack. My, er, little problem’s back again.’

  It was obvious that Joseph’s haemorrhoids had made an unwelcome return. No one ever used the ‘h’ word; we always referred to Joseph’s ‘little problem’.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, Joseph. Would you like a cushion?’

  ‘Thanks, Jack, that’s very kind.’ He lowered himself very gingerly on to one of the cross-stitched cushions that Vera had made for the staff-room. ‘I wondered if we could have a word about the Bible readings for the church services over Christmas,’ he said.

  ‘Why not call round to Bilbo Cottage after school?’ I asked. ‘I should be home by six.’

  Joseph stood up with some relief. ‘Good idea, Jack.’ He paused in the doorway, looked back and smiled. ‘And I’ll bring a bottle.’

  It was six fifteen when I arrived home in Kirkby Steepleton. A sharp wind had sprung up and, over the distant Hambleton hills, heavy grey clouds promised snow. A little white Austin A40 was parked on my driveway, which meant Joseph had arrived. I hurried into the warm house, where loud Scottish voices could be heard in the kitchen.

  My little Glaswegian mother, Margaret, and her sister, May, had arrived for their annual Christmas visit and it hadn’t taken them long to work out what was wrong with Joseph. He was standing by the kitchen door, looking utterly bemused and clutching a wine bottle with a home-made label.

  ‘Hello, Jack,’ said Joseph. He gave me the bottle of murky yellow-green liquid. Joseph was very proud of his home-made wine. ‘It’s my peapod and nettle,’ he said.

  Meanwhile, a strong unpleasant smell drifted out of the kitchen and Joseph and I twitched uncomfortably. Cooking was not Aunt May’s forte.

  ‘Och aye, Vicar, this’ll cure y’asteroids,’ said Aunt May, who possessed a very individual but perfectly understandable use of the English language.

  ‘After a wee portion of May’s dock pudding,’ said Margaret, ‘ye will nae have haemorrhoids.’

  May had cooked the spinach-like leaves of Polygonum bistorta, known locally as ‘snakeweed’, in a large, blackened pan. Then she had stirred in oatmeal, a knob of butter, spring onions and bacon fat. Finally, she had slapped a large spoonful of it into a bowl with a few rashers of bacon and served it to Joseph.

  ‘You’re a paragon of virtue,’ said Joseph, accepting the bowl with a forced smile and inner dread. He carried it into the lounge.

  ‘Och aye, thank you, Vicar,’ shouted Aunt May, who, like my mother, was partially deaf.

  ‘What did the wee man say?’ asked Margaret when May returned to the kitchen.

  ‘He said you’re a polygon of virtue,’ replied May.

  ‘He’s nae bad for a Sassenach,’ said Margaret.

  ‘Shame aboot the asteroids,’ said May.

  Meanwhile, Joseph stared out of the lounge window at the starry sky but at that moment his body felt far from heavenly.

  Three miles away, in the Bustard household, Mrs Bustard was putting the finishing touches to Harold’s halo and Mr Bustard had arrived home from work. The family had returned recently to the council estate on School View after four years in the Midlands. Harold Bustard senior had worked at Calverston Colliery in Nottingham but, after receiving his redundancy package, he had come back to his native Yorkshire and started work as a traffic warden in York.

  By the end of his first day, the portly, bespectacled Harold ‘Bertie’ Bustard reflected that he had not been blessed with the best of names. His first seventeen customers had called him a ‘four-eyed bustard’ – at least, that’s what it sounded like. His mother had once told him that a bustard is a tall elegant bird with long legs, a rotund body and a long neck that lives in open grassland in Africa and Australia. However, there was little opportunity to share this ornithological gem with the irate drivers who ripped up their parking tickets and scattered the pieces at his feet.

  At the kitchen table, ten-year-old Carol Bustard was immersed in her 1978 Jackie Annual and little Harold was tucking into his fish fingers, chips and mushy peas. Suddenly a thought struck him and he screwed up his face with the inner torment of the misunderstood thespian. ‘Ah won’t know what t’say,’ he pleaded – ‘ah don’t know ’ow angels talk.’

  Harold senior sat down and studied the back of the HP Sauce bottle for inspiration. ‘They talk like someone himportant,’ he said.

  ‘Like yer uncle ’Enry,’ added Mrs Bustard triumphantly as she applied some gold tinsel to a bent coathanger.

  Harold senior glared at her. His brother Henry earned twice as much as he did and wore a suit to work. It was a popular topic of conversation in Bustard family circles that in 1975 he had sold more vacuum cleaners than any other salesman in Halifax. ‘No,’ he retorted in a determined manner, ‘more himportant than ’im.’

  ‘Mebbe as famous as Bob Geldof,’ said Carol, looking up from her annual.

  ‘Bob Geldof?’ said Mrs Bustard with a hollow laugh. ‘In a few years’ time no one’ll know ’is name.’

  Carol glowered at her mother, bit savagely into her chip buttie and returned to the step-by-step guide of how to apply blusher like a professional.

  ‘Or like Darth Vader?’ said Harold junior, through a mouthful of mushy peas.

  ‘Or Cliff Richard?’ added Mrs Bustard.

  Harold senior pondered this for a moment. ‘Mmm,’ he said, ‘prob’ly more like Cliff Richard.’

  On Thursday morning the world outside my bedroom window had changed. The first snow of winter had fallen. Kirkby Steepleton was cloaked in a mantle of silence, all sound muffled and frozen in time. In the distance the boughs of elm, sycamore and oak stooped under the weight of snow and, on my driveway, tiny prints of sparrow, cat and fox made patterns on the smooth frosty crust. It was a strange, eerie journey to Ragley village through countryside empty of wildlife and still as stone.

  By the time I arrived in
the school car park the first excited children were in the playground, rolling snowballs and making the first snowmen. Ruby, in a headscarf and old coat, had swept the steps leading to the entrance and was sprinkling them with salt.

  ‘Morning, Mr Sheffield,’ she shouted. ‘Ah’ve turned ’eating up.’

  ‘Thanks, Ruby – you’re a gem,’ I said.

  As I walked across the car park, I saw Jimmy Poole leaning against the school wall and looking thoughtful. He was holding a carrier bag in which his mother had packed a bright-green rolled-up curtain destined to be a Wise Man’s cloak. I stopped to talk to him.

  ‘Good morning, Jimmy,’ I said.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Theffield. Would you like a thweet?’ he said.

  ‘Not just now, thank you, Jimmy,’ I said.

  ‘They’re athid dropth,’ said Jimmy, opening the sticky brown paper bag.

  ‘OK, then.’ I took a sweet and suddenly remembered I should have done something about Spartacus but I had been so busy I had forgotten all about it. ‘Are your parents coming to the concert, Jimmy?’

  ‘Yeth, Mithter Theffield.’

  It was quicker to wait for them to arrive to discuss the missing turkey. ‘So have you been back to the cycle shed, Jimmy?’ I asked.

  ‘No, Mithter Theffield. Ah don’t want to arouthe thuthpithion,’ said Jimmy conspiratorially, looking furtively over his shoulder. I was quietly impressed. Jimmy’s vocabulary was improving dramatically. ‘Ah think it wath like that thtory of Captain Oath when ’e walked out into the thnow,’ said Jimmy.

  I recalled the sad tale of Captain Scott’s fateful journey to the South Pole and there was barely a dry eye in the assembly hall when I described Captain Oates’s heroic gesture to leave the frozen tent to give his comrades a better chance of survival.

  I smiled down at the intense little boy. ‘And is that what Spartacus did, Jimmy, walk out into the snow?’

  Jimmy looked up at me forlornly with his black-button eyes under his curly mop of ginger hair. ‘Yeth, Mr Theffield: it wath thuithide.’

  It was a hectic morning and at twelve o’clock I returned home on the snowy back lane to Kirkby Steepleton to collect Margaret and May. They were very excited about the Christmas concert and, when we returned to school, Anne enlisted their help sewing strands of glitter on the kings’ cloaks.

  After lunch, Ruby swept the hall and the children in my class put out all the dining chairs in neat rows. I wheeled out our Contiboard music trolley with its built-in record deck and two huge speakers. Anne carefully wiped the vinyl surface of her precious Harry Belafonte LP record, clicked the dial to 33 rpm and placed it on the circular rubber mat on the turntable.

  There was an air of expectancy as the first parents walked into the hall and selected the best vantage points. Many had brought cameras to record their angelic offspring. Mrs Petula Dudley-Palmer was one of the early arrivals and sat down next to Sue Phillips.

  ‘Had a good day, Petula?’ asked Sue politely.

  ‘Simply wonderful!’ exclaimed Petula. ‘I’ve been to Leeds and bought some quite delightful presents.’ She then spent five minutes describing her state-of-the-art, revolutionary new A530 Food Processor-De-Luxe. Sue responded with a glassy-eyed smile, knowing full well that Petula Dudley-Palmer would never be able to cook in a month of Sundays and couldn’t tell a parsnip from a tent peg.

  ‘You really must see this present I’ve bought for my Geoffrey,’ said Petula as she pulled out of her leather shopping bag a small shiny box.

  ‘What is it?’ whispered Sue.

  ‘It’s an executive toy for the businessman of the eighties,’ said Petula – ‘at least, that’s what the nice young man said.’

  ‘Yes, but what is it?’ repeated Sue.

  ‘He said it was a desktop status symbol for the modern man,’ recited the brainwashed Petula.

  Sue stared at the picture on the side of the box showing a row of five large chromium ball bearings hanging from wires on a steel frame. ‘Yes, but what exactly is it?’

  ‘It’s Newton’s balls,’ said Petula simply.

  ‘Oh,’ said Sue and settled back in her chair. ‘No wonder the poor man discovered gravity,’ she muttered to herself.

  The hall filled up with parents and grandparents and last to arrive was Mrs Earnshaw, who walked into the hall and parked her pram next to our makeshift stable. This relied heavily on the audience having a good imagination as it comprised two PE mats, a bale of straw and a cardboard donkey.

  Mrs Earnshaw lifted her six-week-old baby from the pram and, immediately, a group of cooing mothers gathered round. The imminent birth of baby Jesus could not compete with this real-life alternative. I found a spare chair and put it near the doorway.

  ‘You should be fine here, Mrs Earnshaw,’ I said.

  ‘That’s reight kind, Mr Sheffield,’ she said.

  ‘So you got your little girl after all?’ I said. ‘What did you decide to call her?’

  ‘This is Dallas Sue-Ellen Earnshaw,’ said Mrs Earnshaw proudly.

  ‘Lovely, er … names,’ I said.

  ‘Ah like Dallas, it suits ’er,’ said Mrs Ackroyd, while she counted the baby’s fingers and toes.

  ‘It’s our fav’rite programme,’ explained Mrs Earnshaw. ‘Would y’like to ’old ’er, Mr Sheffield?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, go on,’ urged Ruby, who had joined the throng.

  Reluctantly, and terrified I would drop this little bundle, I took the baby gingerly from Mrs Earnshaw’s outstretched arms. ‘Yurra natural, Mr Sheffield,’ she said. ‘My Eric dunt know which end’s which.’

  ‘Good job ’e doesn’t feed ’er, then,’ added Mrs Ackroyd with a chuckle.

  Suddenly, Dallas began to make strange noises and I handed her back.

  ‘ ’As little Dallas done a big poo-poo, then?’ said Mrs Earnshaw. The resulting smell that lingered round our stable had nothing to do with our cardboard donkey.

  At two o’clock we were almost ready. In the reception class, Anne was telling the sheep to stop baaa-ing until it was their turn to appear and Jo was breaking up a fight between two of the three kings. Sally’s recorder group had assembled round the donkey and, after she had sprayed it with air freshener, they played ‘Away in a Manger’ in a toxic-free zone. Meanwhile, in my classroom, Jodie Cuthbertson was telling Adam and the Ants to stop trying on her Abba blonde wig, recently ‘borrowed’ from her big sister’s wardrobe.

  Joseph had arrived and Vera looked irritated that he wouldn’t sit down.

  ‘Margaret,’ whispered May, ‘the poor wee vicar still canna sit doon.’

  ‘Och aye,’ said Margaret, ‘he nae looks comfortable.’

  ‘Asteroids,’ mouthed May.

  ‘Piles,’ whispered Margaret.

  ‘Och aye,’ said May.

  ‘D’ye ken what Miss McKenzie told us in school?’ said Margaret.

  May nodded in acknowledgement. ‘Dinna sit doon on cold floors,’ she said.

  ‘… Or hot radiators,’ added Margaret. She folded her arms in a self-satisfied way and sat back in her chair. Like a perfect mirror image, May did the same and they returned their attention to the arrival of a flock of lively sheep wearing outsize Arran sweaters and painted masks. The nativity had begun.

  Little Benjamin Roberts walked round his flock and used his shepherd’s crook to administer a sharp thwack to the backside of anyone he disliked. Meanwhile Sally had removed her multicoloured random-striped poncho, her favourite Bernat Klein design, in order to conduct her recorder group while the choir sang ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’. That is, all except for young Harold Bustard, who replaced the word ‘Herald’ with ‘Harold’ as he always had done, totally oblivious of his error and secretly pleased that his name was special enough to feature in a Christmas carol. He looked down at his flock of friends and wished he could be part of them as his moment of fame approached.

  ‘And an angel of the Lord came down and glory shone around,’ said little Benjamin Roberts. Harold was us
hered on from the side of the hall by Jo. He certainly looked the part in his white sheet and batman wings. Fortunately his sticking-out ears provided the perfect support for his coathanger halo.

  Harold climbed on to a wooden stage block behind the nativity scene and looked down at the audience. Mr and Mrs Bustard held hands tightly and stared in admiration at the next generation of angelic Bustards.

  Elisabeth Amelia Dudley-Palmer as Mary, in a professionally refitted bridesmaid dress and a flowing royal-blue headscarf, looked up in anticipation.

  Harold stood there, his halo twinkling under the fluorescent lights.

  Elisabeth Amelia decided to help him out. ‘Have you any news?’ she asked.

  Harold stared longingly at the flock of sheep. All his friends were there.

  ‘So, you’ve got a message for us, haven’t you?’ insisted Elisabeth Amelia. ‘It’s about the birth of Jesus, isn’t it?’

  Harold took a deep breath and then in a big voice he shouted, ‘Baaah-baaah.’

  The sheep looked up in surprise and then, led by Heathcliffe and Terry Earnshaw, they responded as one united flock. ‘Baaah-baaah,’ they all cried.

  Mrs Bustard immediately began to clap, little Harold waved in acknowledgement and all the sheep, led by Heathcliffe, stood up and bowed.

  ‘There’s a lot o’ wee sheep,’ said Margaret.

  ‘Och aye,’ said May. ‘I almost fell asleep counting ’em.’

  They both burst into fits of laughter and joined in the applause.

  Meanwhile, in the entrance hall, I was standing quietly next to the Three Kings, mainly to ensure Caspar and Melchior did not resume their dispute over who was going to be the first king to present a gift to baby Jesus. Jimmy Poole, as Balthazar, looked regal in his green curtain-cloak and cardboard crown, although his York City football socks did slightly reduce the overall effect. The three boys picked up their parcels of gold, frankincense and myrrh: or, to be more precise, a box of Pagan Man aftershave, an empty foil-wrapped packet of Klondike Pete Golden Nuggets and a tissue-covered empty can of Watney’s Party Seven Draught Bitter and waited for their moment to walk on.