by Mike Ripley
‘That’s the village primary school,’ Perdita said patiently. ‘Ash Grange is at the other end of the village at the top of this hill. Godfather Brigham said if we kept going we’d come it eventually.’
Rupert leaned forward in the passenger seat, turning his head to give a running commentary on his view through the windscreen and his side window.
‘I spy a row of houses, then another and another,’ he said. ‘In fact, if it wasn’t for those little alleyways between them it could be one long continuous sausage of a house.’
‘Ginnels,’ said Perdita primly.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘They call them ginnels up here – those passageways between the rows of houses. It’s how people get to their back doors.’
Rupert, suitably impressed at his wife’s local knowledge, concentrated on the left side of the road where more modern houses were clustered in small cul-de-sacs where the contours of the hill had allowed. Between them were detached buildings set back from the edge of the road as the church had been, and in Rupert’s personal game of ‘I Spy’, many of them indeed seemed to be churches.
‘I spy with my little eye something called the Zion Chapel. Do you think they placed it deliberately near the working men’s club on the principle of know-your-enemy? And now my little eye can’t quite believe it’s now spying a Wesleyan Chapel as well, not to mention’ – he paused for dramatic effect – ‘a Primitive Methodist Chapel, whatever that is. The churches believe in outnumbering the pubs round here, don’t they? It’s not like Norwich, is it?’
‘Norwich?’ laughed his wife. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Isn’t it Norwich which has a church for every Sunday but a pub for every day of the year?’ posed Rupert.
‘I’ll take your word on that,’ chuckled Perdita, ‘but I wouldn’t worry about the bodies and souls of the local inhabitants here. Their needs, both spiritual and temporal, seem to be well catered for and there’s another pub to even up the odds.’
‘So there is.’
Although clearly older and more picturesque, the Sun Inn made no attempt to compete with the bold claims of its larger competitor, yet it occupied, at the western edge of the village, a similar strategic position guarding the solid stone bridge which carried the road on towards Huddersfield just as the Green Dragon protected the fork in the road at the eastern end. Rupert imagined the two pubs almost as victualing customs posts guarding the entrances to Denby Ash, with the large working men’s club he had ‘spied’ exactly halfway between the two acting as some sort of United Nation’s demarcation line. Perhaps there were gregarious customers who could not make the journey from one pub to the other without a refreshment break. Or perhaps the locals were so fiercely loyal to either the Sun or the Green Dragon that the issue divided the village and the idea of visiting both was akin to breaking a local taboo.
Then Rupert’s alcoholic reverie was shattered as Perdita accelerated and the Mini Cooper jumped over the hump of the stone bridge with stomach-plunging enthusiasm, as if joyous to be free of the village.
‘So that was Denby Ash,’ Perdita said cheerfully, thinking she had jolted, quite literally, her husband out of his irritating ‘I Spy’ mode.
‘But what the devil is that?’ said Rupert, pointing a finger at the windscreen, or rather the black, pyramidal peak which loomed suddenly large to their left.
‘That’s what they call a muck stack in these parts. Impressive, isn’t it?’
‘In a dark, satanic sort of way I suppose it is,’ admitted Rupert. ‘Is it a mountain of coal?’
‘I think it’s the stuff they pull out of the ground that isn’t proper coal – stuff nobody wants. Technically it’s “spoil” but it can still burn and some of these big muck stacks are permanently smoking, a bit like Vesuvius or Etna.’
‘They don’t blow up, though, do they?’ Rupert asked nervously, recalling a visit to Pompeii as an undergraduate.
‘Not usually, though there was that one which slid down the hill and caused the Aberfan disaster in Wales,’ Perdita said soberly.
‘God, that was awful; those poor children in that school.’
‘Don’t worry, dear – that couldn’t happen here. Ash Grange was the stately home of the mine owners once upon a time and they would have made sure they built it a safe distance away from any dirt or danger.’
Rupert studied his wife carefully, unconsciously imitating the expression his father adopted when he peered over the top of his spectacles at someone.
‘That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it, darling?’
‘Perhaps I’m getting more Bolshie the further north we come,’ Perdita said vaguely.
‘Then it’s a good job your godfather’s school isn’t in Scotland.’
‘In fact,’ said Perdita as she braked and indicated, ‘it’s right here.’
‘We are a small school,’ said Brigham Armitage, gripping the lapels of his Harris Tweed jacket as if they were the straps of a parachute, ‘and of course we are very young. Indeed, I suspect that your husband is older than we are.’
Perdita smiled, acknowledging the gallantry of her godfather, who knew perfectly well how old she was and that she too had seniority over his school.
‘We have three hundred and thirty boys on the school roll. They range from eleven to fifteen in age and we organize them in eleven forms each of platoon strength or as near as we can get. Ideally, we envisaged a proper House system, though we do not as yet have any distinguished old boys – or benefactors – after which we could name them. Were you in Kilbracken at Rugby, young Campion?’
‘Yes, actually I was,’ said Rupert smartly, slightly uncomfortable, though not knowing quite why, at being in a headmaster’s study.
They had been met at the oaken door by a prim, blue-rinsed woman wearing a cardigan buttoned to the neck as if it was a uniform, who had introduced herself as Mrs Celia Armitage and informed them that ‘the headmaster’ (not, Rupert noted, ‘my husband’) was ready and waiting to receive them.
‘Thought as much,’ said the headmaster, ‘always was the best house when it came to school plays and things dramatic. Sadly, we don’t have that sort of tradition here at Ash Grange, but then those things take time and growth. Fortunately, the Comprehensive system is helping us enormously.’
‘It is?’ Perdita squeaked in surprise, the blue china cup and saucer she held rattling loudly and the Rich Tea biscuit she had been dunking surreptitiously quivered dangerously.
‘Oh, yes, my dear, it most certainly is. If the Labour government pushes ahead with its plans for Comprehensive Schools then more and more parents will opt for private education for their children and I envisage we will be fully fee-paying within the next three years.’
‘You’re not at the moment?’ asked Rupert.
‘Only about sixty per cent of our boys are private pupils,’ said the headmaster. ‘The remainder come via the local education authority after sitting the eleven-plus. Of course, the local authority is strongly Labour and supports the Comprehensive ideal.’
‘It does sound an attractive ideal,’ Perdita said, turning her face up and smiling sweetly at her godfather.
The hairs on the back of Rupert’s neck began to stand to attention. Had he really married a Bolshevik? Fortunately Brigham Armitage, although he had the demeanour and sartorial smartness of an off-duty church warden, did not seem at all worried by radical concepts, especially not when issued from a perfectly pretty mouth.
‘Which of course it is,’ said Mr Armitage, returning Perdita’s smile from underneath a neatly clipped moustache, ‘in theory. Equal opportunity in education is a perfectly sound ambition. The problem is, my dear, that in practice it will mean catering to the lowest ability and the brighter children will be held back.’
‘The brighter children or just selected children from privileged and richer families?’ Perdita asked, noting that her husband was staring fixedly into his teacup and shuffling uncomfortably in his chair.
/> The headmaster, as headmasters are trained from birth to be, remained unflappable.
‘Some of our best pupils are county boys as we call them and not only do they not pay fees but many win scholarships from the various foundations and charities in the mining industry, which even covers the cost of their uniforms and their bus fares. As long as they are pupils at Ash Grange, our aim is to get as many of them as possible into the five per cent of young people who go on to university, whatever their background. If that is condoning privilege and selection, then so be it.’
For the second time since they had entered school premises, a strident electric bell rang out, the sound bringing the same relief to Rupert as it would to an out-matched boxer reeling from a first round battering.
‘That’s the end of final period,’ said the headmaster, ‘and we should remove ourselves to the staff room where we can catch your new colleagues or at least some of them before they disappear.’
‘Do some of them live off the premises?’ Rupert asked, thinking it an innocent enough, non-political issue.
‘All of them,’ said Mr Armitage. ‘My wife and I are here all the time, of course, and the senior staff are on a rota. Two of them are on duty every night to supervise the boarders. We have about thirty boarders, mostly sons of army families, at the moment but Celia hopes we will have many more in the future. She rather likes the idea of being a den-mother. We never managed to have children of our own, you see.’
Brigham Armitage eased himself from the captain’s chair and stood to attention behind his desk. He raised his right hand to his face, almost as if he were about to salute, but with finger and thumb stroked the wingtips of his moustache to ensure every individual hair was in its proper place, then he tugged down on the hem of his waistcoat and buttoned his jacket, all with clipped military movements.
‘If you would follow me, I’ll lead the way to the staff room,’ he announced, ‘if, that is, we can avoid being trampled by a herd of boys thundering to leave now that school is finished for the day, then I’ll give you a brief tour of the premises, just to get your basic bearings.’
He ushered the young Campions towards his study door. ‘I am sure you have a preconceived notion of us,’ he said genially, ‘especially if you’ve read Nicholas Nickleby.’
‘You mean Dotheboys Hall?’ said Rupert with convincing innocence. ‘That thought had not crossed our minds.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it did. The comparison is always made by people from down south, but we have broad shoulders here in Yorkshire. We are used to being characterized as a race of skinflints who wear flat caps, like their beer with a big head and only listen to brass band music, and whenever I tell a southerner that I run a school in Yorkshire, they inevitably call me Wackford Squeers.’
‘Surely not,’ soothed Perdita, slipping an arm around as much of her godfather’s shoulders as she could reach. ‘He was a perfectly horrid man and you’re a perfectly sweet one. Ash Grange isn’t anything like Dotheboys Hall, is it?’
Mr Armitage smiled, his heart obviously melting at his Bolshevik goddaughter’s flattery.
‘Only in one respect, I hope. The advertisement for Dotheboys, according to Dickens, claims that the school offers “No extras, no vacations and diet unparalleled”. Well, we do supply extras and we certainly have vacations, but when it comes to offering a diet unparalleled, I have to say we are inordinately proud of our catering and our diet – as you can see’ – he patted his well-filled waistcoat – ‘is indeed unparalleled. But then, I have to say that as my good lady wife is in charge of catering and that is the one area of the school where the headmaster has absolutely no authority whatsoever. Do not, however, repeat what I just said in the staff room. As far as the staff – and the boys come to that – are concerned, the headmaster is all-knowing, all-powerful and absolutely everywhere at once.’
Rupert and Perdita dutifully followed the omniscient and omnipotent Brigham Armitage along a high, windowless corridor which led into the bowels of the school. As was clearly the highway code of traffic within the establishment, they walked on the left and a trickle of schoolboys pulling on coats and scarves, or struggling with heavily laden haversacks or satchels, marched in procession in the opposite direction. To a boy they were quiet and orderly and all greeted the headmaster with a polite ‘Good night, sir’. The older ones, or at least those over five feet tall, all gave Perdita a second if not a third glance. Rupert wondered whether he should scowl at them but restrained himself on the grounds that boys were apt to be, when all was said and done, boys.
Along the length of the corridor, well above head height and out of reach of the casual juvenile vandal hung an eclectic series of framed oil paintings without any apparent linking theme. Yet two of them, hanging side by side, struck a chord of recognition in Rupert.
‘Excuse me, Headmaster,’ he said formally as there were boys in the corridor, ‘but those two paintings look rather familiar.’
‘Are you an art lover, Mr Campion?’ Mr Armitage stopped in his tracks, acknowledged a brace of boys hurrying past with a respectful nod and then concentrated on the paintings Rupert was pointing at.
‘Not really,’ Rupert confessed. ‘It was just that those two are both landscapes, or should I say “seascapes”, of the Suffolk coast, are they not?’
‘They are indeed. Do you know the artists?’
‘Not a clue, I’m afraid, but we know that coast.’
‘Yes, of course,’ the headmaster mused, ‘you would. They are both of the area around Walberswick and Southwold. The one on the right is a Bernard Priestman and the other’s a Rowland Suddaby. East Anglia seems to have exerted quite a pull on our artists.’
‘Your artists, Headmaster?’ Perdita asked. ‘Are they connected to the school?’
Mr Armitage glanced along the corridor and his eyes flashed in a silent warning that they were being overheard by several sets of juvenile ears working with bat-like precision.
‘Sadly no, Miss Browning; I meant “our artists” in the sense that all the paintings hung here are by Yorkshiremen. The next one, that rather surreal daub which looks like a draughts’ board someone has taken an axe to, is by Edward Wadsworth. Not to my taste at all, far too modern, but he was a Yorkshireman – born in Cleckheaton actually, which is not that far from here – and he did some sterling work for the navy in the First War on “dazzle camouflage” on ships. Zigzags and big black and white stripes, that sort of thing, to break up the outlines and confuse the enemy.
‘And next to that is my personal favourite: a Yorkshire scene by a Victorian painter of the old school, as it were. That’s one of Atkinson Grimshaw’s views of Whitby harbour at evening. Grimshaw was a Leeds man, but I don’t hold that against him. He’s often looked down on as a journeyman painter, slightly mechanical perhaps, and clearly no Turner.’
‘But you know what you like!’ Perdita said cheekily.
‘We usually do in Yorkshire,’ said Mr Armitage stiffly, ‘and being Yorkshiremen we naturally ignore the rather snooty comments of so-called art critics.’
‘Not just those critics based in London and the south?’ asked Rupert gently.
‘I thought all critics were based in London,’ the headmaster said casually whilst aiming a steely stare at his goddaughter. ‘Especially theatre critics.’
‘Well, we certainly don’t pay them any heed, do we?’ Perdita bristled.
‘We wouldn’t give their opinions house-room in Yorkshire, my dear … my dear Miss Browning.’
‘Good for you, Headmaster, and whatever my hus— Whatever Mr Campion thinks, I like your Atkinson Grimshaw.’
Rupert, who could not remember passing an opinion on the painting, bit his tongue and remained silent.
‘Thank you. He is an artist who is yet to have his day, I feel. I bought that canvas ten years ago for seventy pounds and I look on it as a sound investment. It’s going to be worth a pretty penny one day. But enough of my hobby. The working day of a headmaster extends long after the
last day bell has gone and I want you to meet at least some of the staff before they disappear, so let us proceed to the Dragons’ Den, as the boys call it.’
Mr Armitage indicated they should continue down the corridor which ended in a small hallway, where a set of incongruously modern stairs rose to the first-floor level providing a bridge to a more recent extension to the house. As the stairs were clearly in use by a trickle of departing schoolboys all wearing relieved expressions, it was a safe assumption that they led to a series of classrooms. On the far side of the stairwell was a polished oak door with a shiny brass plate proclaiming: staff room.
In any school, particularly in the early morning before assembly and at going-home time in the afternoon, a headmaster has to take on the role of a traffic policeman on point duty. It was a clearly a role which came naturally to Brigham Armitage, who stepped into the midstream of pupils descending the stairs, one arm raised to halt traffic, the other waving the Campions across the hall to the safety of the staff room.
Their crossing should have been unremarkable and without hazard, despite Perdita having to smother a giggle at the sudden thought of Mr Armitage assuming the responsibilities of the Tufty Club, were it not for a sudden commotion at the top of the stairs just as the Campions were being given right-of-way across the bottom.
‘Oh, do get out of my way, you stupid boys! I have a bus to catch.’
The owner of that angry feminine voice appeared through a scrum of startled boys, all of whom melted to the side of the staircase to allow the bustling tornado to pass freely. It was a woman of late middle-age, very tall and very thin, who clearly demonstrated that her elbows were sharp and that she could use them destructively. She wore a double-breasted brown-and-grey check plaid wool coat and a beige hat of plush sheepskin which could only be described as bucket-shaped.
She descended the stairs in a fury, using the handbag she clutched to bat away any boy who might obstruct her progress, and for a second Perdita thought the woman could not have seen them in their little tableau at the foot of the stairs, directly in her path.