‘That’s what ’appened wi’ Oscar and Eric, weren’t it, Jacob?’
‘Aye,’ replied the boy sagely.
‘What sort of accident did they have?’ I enquired innocently.
‘Well, Eric were feeling a bit lively like and made a move for cows in t’next field. ’e went through a thick ’awthorn ’edge, a drystone wall and two gates afore mi dad blocked him wi’ tractor. Anyroad, Eric charged tractor and bust a few bones. Got an infection and had to be put down.’
‘I thought the idea was for the bull to get to the cows?’ I commented.
Both boys looked at me with disdainful expressions. ‘We’re talkin’ big bulls ’ere. A ton and an ’arf – ’ed have brok every cow’s back.’
‘I see,’ I said feebly. ‘Well, shall we look at your books?’
‘In olden days, when Mr Purvis’s granddad up at Providence Farm had Caesar, he used to dig a pit, put t’cow in it and lower t’bull on with two reight big, thick leather straps.’
‘I see,’ I said weakly. ‘Could you get your English books out, please?’
‘Nowadays it’s all mechanised,’ the boy continued regardless. ‘They put t’bull in a serving cage and lower him on and lift him off, lower him on and lift him off.’
‘My granddad says it’s not a bad old life,’ remarked Roger, echoing the comments I had heard earlier that morning at Providence Farm.
I tried again to move the conversation away from what was becoming an increasingly embarrassing conversation. ‘So what have you been doing in English this week?’
‘Now, t’other bull, Oscar, ’e went and ’ad t’accident.’
‘What accident was that?’ I asked somewhat stupidly.
‘Accident what Belgian Blues ’ave.’
‘And what is that?’
‘Tha knaws,’ said the boy, eyeing me seriously.
‘I don’t.’
‘Tha’ does.’
‘Really I don’t. What accident did he have?’
The boy gave his companion another knowing look, the tired, long-suffering look of the expert attempting to explain a simple concept to an ignoramus. ‘Well, Mester Phinn, sometimes when a bull gets to t’fust cow, he’s very keen…’ At this point I wished I had stayed with the fantasy world of Merrytown and its cardboard inhabitants, for I anticipated that what was to follow would be as blunt as a sump hammer. ‘And ’e gets a bit carried away like and sometimes ’e overdoes it and ’is willy snaps.’ I could hear my great in-drawing of breath and feel a red flush creeping up my neck.
I retreated to the classroom window and stared at the view outside, attempting to regain my composure. I felt decidedly weak at the knees and was entirely at a loss for words. A flood of sunlight poured into the room, slanting in long bars across the dusty air. All was still. Through the window the vast, green rolling fells shimmered in the bright light, the narrow road curled endlessly between the fields, and far off an invisible bird called plaintively from the sun-warmed grass. I was brought back to reality by Jacob, who tapped me gently on the arm and looked up with a twinkle in his bright eyes.
‘It’s all reight, Mester Phinn,’ he said winking, ‘it only ’appens wi’ bulls!’
23
I was in love. Since the first moment I had set eyes on Christine, appearing round the side of Winnery Nook Nursery and Infant School like some vision, with those deep blue eyes and the soft mass of golden hair, I had been smitten. Over the twenty-one months I had known her, that love had become so powerful that it felt like a wearying sickness. She was always in my thoughts. I was like a love-lorn schoolboy, day-dreaming at the back of the classroom during a rather tedious lesson and staring vacantly out of the window whilst thinking of Christine. In the middle of meetings at the Education Office, my thoughts would inevitably drift to a picture of her smiling or laughing or humming to herself as she frequently did. On a course, the words of the speaker would flow over me as my mind would be fixed on Christine, visualising her sitting in the middle of a group of happy infants, sharing a book with them or reading a poem or singing a nursery rhyme in that soft, hypnotic voice. And people were beginning to notice.
Late one afternoon towards the end of the Summer term I stopped focusing on the report I was supposed to be reading and began to dream of the woman I loved.
‘Gervase!’ snapped Sidney. ‘Are you entirely with us this afternoon? You look as if you are wired up to a brick!’
‘Pardon?’
‘I have just asked you an important question and, rather than do me the courtesy of responding, you completely ignored me and continued to peer into the middle distance like Macbeth upon seeing the ghost of Banquo.’
‘I’m sorry, Sidney, I was miles away.’
‘Indeed you were. Now, what do you think?’
‘What do I think about what?’
Sidney gave a great heaving sigh. ‘I was asking about the arrangements for the Creative Arts Course in Oxford next weekend.’
‘Well, what about them?’
‘Give me strength!’
Following her visit to the Staff Development Centre last December, Miss de la Mare had written to say how impressed she had been with the training and had invited Sidney and me to be tutors on a Ministry of Education course the weekend before the end of the Summer term. We had both been very flattered to have been asked and readily agreed. It had seemed so far ahead then that I had put it to the back of my mind. Now the course was about to happen, I realised that I had not given a single thought to it. Help! My mind was completely occupied with higher thoughts.
‘I said that it would be a sensible idea if we both travelled down to Oxford together.’
‘Pardon?’
‘What is the matter with you? Are you sickening for something? I asked if we should travel down to Oxford together?’
‘Yes, that’s fine, Sidney.’
‘It would be better, I think, if we went in your old Volvo estate. I will have to take all my materials, easels and equipment, display boards and, of course, the stuffed animals.’
David, who had been working quietly until this point, raised his head slowly like a weary tortoise, peered over the top of his spectacles and said, ‘You are not taking those wretched stuffed animals with you, are you, Sidney?’
‘Of course! They are the next best thing to first-hand experience. I always take my stuffed animals with me when I run a course. I would be lost without them.’
David shook his head. ‘Well, I’m glad I’m not travelling down to Oxford with you and a car full of flea-ridden, dead creatures glaring and snarling out of the window.’
‘I never glare and snarl out of windows,’ said Sidney calmly. ‘Anyway, I don’t hear Gervase complaining.’ He turned to me. ‘You have no problem with my stuffed animals, do you, Gervase? Gervase!’ Once again, I was only half-listening to the office chatter. ‘I said you don’t have a problem, do you?’
‘Who said I had a problem?’
‘I give up,’ sighed Sidney. ‘We will talk about this when you emerge from the catatonic trance.’
‘You are unusually unforthcoming this afternoon, Gervase,’ remarked David. ‘Not your old self at all. Is there something on your mind?’
‘No, no, there’s nothing on my mind.’
‘Is it that dreadful dragon of a headteacher from Henderson Road School?’ asked Sidney grimacing. ‘She complains about all the inspectors so I shouldn’t worry.’
‘No, nothing like that.’
‘The Ugglemattersby inspection?’
‘No, no, that’s all been done and dusted and the governors accepted the report and Mr Sharples is taking early retirement.’
‘It’ll be Mrs Savage, then,’ announced David almost gleefully. ‘That Ice Maiden would put the wind up a banshee. She’s been after me about those ridiculous coloured forms of hers. Has she been chasing you?’
‘No, it’s not Mrs Savage.’
‘Well, what is it?’ both my colleagues asked in unison.
‘I can’t say. It’s… it’s… I need to sort it out myself.’
‘Now come along, Gervase!’ exclaimed Sidney, turning his full attention on me. ‘We are your friends as well as your colleagues. You can tell us whatever it is. I’ve been on the county’s counselling course and was singled out for my ability to listen sympathetically, so if you want to confide in me, get things off your chest, I’m all ears. I’ve also done art therapy and a stress management weekend so I am well equipped to help.’
‘Help!’ snorted David. ‘Well equipped to help! You forget, Sidney, that I was also on that disastrous counselling course and you were singled out, as I remember, for your complete inability to listen to other people and the total insensitivity of your advice. After contact with you, the people in your group were suicidal at the end. As I recall, your solution to whatever problem that arose was to look the person in the eye and tell them to pull themselves together, stop whinging and snap out of it. I well remember that poor tutor’s words: “With you, Mr Clamp, a trouble shared is a trouble doubled.” And on the stress management weekend I heard that the tutor went down with severe depression herself, remarking that you did not so much suffer from stress, you were more of a carrier. She headed for her car a gibbering wreck.’
‘I shall choose to ignore those slanderous comments, David, because my dear friend here is in need of some help and support. Now, Gervase, what is the matter? Tell, tell.’
‘I’m in love!’ I blurted out.
There was a stunned silence.
‘In love?’ repeated Sidney, after what seemed a long, long pause. ‘Oh, that is serious. Is it someone we know?’
‘Yes, of course it is!’ I snapped, already regretting my confession.
‘Is it a certain desirable doctor of philosophy, with alluring Irish eyes and a smile like a rainbow?’
‘No, it’s not Gerry. I hardly know her.’
‘Is it a certain well-preserved, power-dressed widow with a predatory look and a smile like a shark?’
‘Mrs Savage? Do me a favour!’
‘The femme fatale with the feather duster in the crackling nylon overall who inhabits the SDC?’
‘Sidney, will you be serious!’
‘Then it must be the Nordic beauty, the blonde bombshell, the delectable Miss Bentley of Winnery Nook.’
‘You know full well it is.’
‘I don’t see a problem, myself.’
‘What did I say?’ announced David shaking his head. ‘All the sensitivity of a sledge hammer.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ continued Sidney. ‘He’s been taking her out for the best part of two years.’ He turned his attention back to me. ‘I mean, it’s hardly a whirlwind romance.’
‘I’ve not been taking her out for the best part of two years,’ I said. ‘I only started seeing Christine last summer.’
‘Well, you want to look sharpish. She’s an extremely attractive young woman. Very marriageable. If you don’t start pulling your finger out, being a bit more dynamic, proactive and determined, you’ll be getting a “Dear John” letter. She’ll go back to that dreadful soldier and give you the old heave-ho!’
‘Now, does that make you feel a lot better, Gervase?’ asked David sarcastically. ‘Has that wonderfully sympathetic advice helped you with your little problem? You know, Sidney, with such obvious sensitivity and understanding, you ought to work for the Samaritans.’
‘I am only telling him to gird up his loins and go for it. I mean, look at him. He’s like a sick calf, mooning about the office. I certainly do not relish a weekend in Oxford with him in this powerless state.’
‘Well, that’s what love does for you,’ said David. ‘I recall someone saying that love was like the measles – that it is something we all have to go through. I know I did.’
‘More like the mumps with me!’ exclaimed Sidney. ‘Incredibly painful and all the more so when you’re older. You see, David, the problem with Gervase is –’
‘Excuse me, Sidney, would you mind not talking about me as if I’m not here?’ I said.
‘You see, your problem, Gervase, is what I was saying about the mumps. It’s happening to you late in life so it’s affecting you far worse.’
‘Late in life!’ I cried. ‘I’m just over thirty, not in my dotage!’
‘But as you get older, you get more picky, more difficult to please. My advice, if you really love Christine, is to face up to things, take the bull by the horns, grasp the nettle and be decisive. Stop shilly-shallying, ask her straight out to marry you.’
My stomach gave a great lurch at the very word ‘marry’.
‘And pull yourself together, stop whinging and snap out of it,’ added David mimicking Sidney’s voice. ‘You see what I mean about Sidney’s sensitive approach to a problem? As tactful as a charging elephant.’
‘It’s not as easy as that, Sidney,’ I said sighing. ‘She might not be ready for… er… marriage. She’s so involved with her work in school. We’ve never discussed any future together and she might not feel the same way about me. She might not be the marrying sort. She’s a very independent woman is Christine. I know she likes my company and we enjoy the same things but –’
‘Have you told her how lovely she is and that you can’t stop thinking about her?’ asked Sidney.
‘No.’
‘Have you told her that when she smiles the birds begin to sing and the sun begins to shine?’
‘No.’
‘Have you told her that you can’t live without her?’
‘No.’
‘Have you told her that you love her?’
‘No.’
Sidney snorted. ‘Then how, in heaven’s name, is she to know how you feel? She might think that you are the one who isn’t ready for marriage. She might think that you are too involved with your work to think about anything else. She might think that you don’t feel the same way about her as she might think about you. She might think that you are not the marrying sort.’
‘Much as I am loath to admit it,’ ventured David, who had been listening intently, ‘Sidney, despite his bluntness, is perfectly right. You have to let her know how you really feel about her.’
‘You, of all people, Gervase,’ continued Sidney, ‘are supposed to possess the higher order language skills, the ability to use words at their richest and most persuasive. Can’t you pen her a poem and write it in chalk down the path to Winnery Nook School? – something along the lines of “Oh dearest heart, come kiss me gently, Be my love, my Christine Bentley.” ’
‘I’d stick to painting and stuffed animals if I were you, Sidney,’ said David. ‘He doesn’t want to frighten her off with that sort of doggerel, or get arrested for defacing school property.’
‘I’ll have you know it worked with my wife,’ retorted Sidney. ‘When I painted my Lila a poem on the wall of her flat she was putty in my hands.’
‘Probably drunk,’ said David, before turning his attention back to the topic under discussion. ‘I think Gervase ought to take Christine out for a really romantic dinner in a remote country inn,’ he said. ‘Champagne, roses, soft music. That’s the way it’s done. And I know the very place. A delightful French restaurant with superb food and magnificent views, not too far from here.’
‘Is that the way you proposed?’ I asked.
‘Well, no, actually,’ replied David. ‘I asked Gwynneth in a bus shelter on a rainy Sunday afternoon in Pontypool. We were having a little cwtch and –’
‘A little what?’ exclaimed Sidney. ‘What in the world is a cutch?’
‘A cwtch – Welsh for a cuddle,’ explained David. ‘And I said, “What about it, Cariad?” She said it was quite unexpected and she would have to think about it as her mother had not taken to me at all. Thirty years later and her mother’s still not too sure about me. It took her three months – Gwynneth, that is, not her mother – to make up her mind and then she said she would have to iron out my irritating habits.’
‘She was singularly unsuccessful o
n that count,’ murmured Sidney.
‘You see, that’s just what I mean,’ I said. ‘Suppose Christine says she likes me but couldn’t marry me. It would be the end of everything. I couldn’t go on seeing her. If I delay it a bit, carry on as we are, she might grow to love me in time – like your wife, David. I just think it might be better to do nothing for the time being.’
‘Faint heart, dear boy, faint heart!’ exclaimed Sidney. ‘She might think you are trifling with her affections and get tired of waiting about. Have you ever thought of that? I mean, it’s been getting on for two years, well, over a year anyway, that you have been taking her out. She won’t go on waiting for ever. And you’re no spring chicken. The summer holidays are nearly upon us. She’ll be gadding off to some exotic location full of rich, eligible, unattached men who will buzz around her like bees around a honey pot. You’ve got to go for it. Be decisive. You could start by giving her a quick clutch in a bus shelter.’
‘A cwtch!’ snapped David. ‘And it worked for me!’
‘Look, Gervase, do you love her?’ asked Sidney, suddenly turning very serious.
‘Yes, I do,’ I replied.
‘Well, why don’t you ask her to marry you?’
‘I’m frightened she’ll say no. I haven’t got much money saved, I drive an old car and I live in a rented flat. It wouldn’t be an offer she couldn’t refuse.’
Sidney got up from his desk and came and perched on the corner of my desk. ‘That’s not the real reason though, is it?’ he continued.
‘What?’ I replied.
‘The fact that you’ve not much money and live in a rented flat.’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I’m just frightened that she doesn’t love me.’
Sidney sighed and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Well, old boy, there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?’
Sidney was right, of course. I could not delay any longer. I decided that when I returned from the course in Oxford I would take Christine out for that romantic dinner suggested by David and ask her to marry me.
I arrived at Sidney’s house early on the Saturday morning as arranged, to find my colleague dressed like an ageing pop star in wildly bright T-shirt and jeans. He was in the garage, collecting together an assortment of stuffed animals and equipment. He stopped what he was doing when he caught sight of me heading down the path towards him. I was about to ask him the question he put to me.
Over Hill and Dale Page 30