04 Village Teacher (17 page)

‘They’re safe enough,’ said Don. ‘ ’E’s gorrem in a cage.’

‘They look evil little buggers t’me,’ said Sheila.

‘Don’t let ’im ’ear y’saying that. ’E sez’ ’e’s a ferret-legger,’ said Don with a sense of awe.

‘What’s that s’pposed t’be?’

‘Dunno, luv, but looking at t’teeth on that one ’e calls Garfunkle ah wouldn’t want t’find out.’

‘Here y’are,’ said Sheila as she served Kingsley with a pork pie and two pickled onions. ‘That’ll put ’airs on y’chest.’

Kingsley picked up one of the pickled onions and studied it as if he was a jeweller examining a flawed diamond. ‘Ta, luv,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘but in Grimethorpe we ’ave pickled onions as big as y’fist.’

We all nodded in acknowledgement at this little-known but very significant fact.

Kingsley soon found a welcome audience and explained that the ancient sport of ‘ferret-legging’ – namely, popping a ferret down a trouser leg and starting the clock – was his favourite pastime. Generations of Yorkshire miners had done this to thwart unfriendly gamekeepers and Kingsley was keen to keep up the tradition.

Apparently, a certain Mr Reginald Mellor, soldier, steeplejack and miner, had slipped one down his trouser leg while being interviewed by Brian Glover, the Barnsley playwright and actor. Mr Mellor had been disdainful of the pretenders to his crown. According to
The Guinness Book of Records
the longest time for keeping a ferret down your trousers had been recorded at an impressive forty seconds. Mr Mellor claimed his best time was over five hours.

‘So are there any rules f ’this ferrets-down-yer-trousers stuff?’ asked Don as he pulled Kingsley’s third pint of Tetley’s bitter.

‘Tha’s got to ’ave rules, tha knaws,’ said Kingsley gravely. ‘Y’trouser bottoms ’ave t’be tucked into y’socks for a start-off, so t’ferret can run from one leg to t’other.’

‘That meks sense,’ said Big Dave.

‘It does that,’ agreed Little Malcolm.

Everyone nodded and winced at the indisputable logic.

‘An y’can’t use tranquillizers t’mek ’em dozy,’ said Kingsley, supping deeply on his pint.

‘Ah never thought o’ that,’ said Shane.

Clint considered this and reflected that no ferret with an ounce of sense would ever dream of biting his psychopathic brother.

‘An’ y’can’t tek ’em y’self t’dull t’pain.’

We all blinked at the thought.

‘Ah never thought o’ that, neither,’ said Shane.

Everyone nodded. It was always wise to agree with Shane, even with a double negative.

‘An’ they’ve purra stop t’filing a ferret’s teeth t’mek ’em less sharp,’ added Kingsley with gravitas.

And for the first time in my life I felt an empathy with ferrets.

On my way out I bumped into Stan Coe. As he weighed sixteen stones I came off worse.

‘Watch where y’going, Sheffield,’ he said gruffly.

‘I usually do, Mr Coe,’ I said.

He barred my way, not letting me pass.

‘Excuse me, please,’ I said.

‘Not looking quite so good now f ’you, Sheffield,’ he said with a brown-toothed leer. ‘From what ah ’ear, y’days are numbered.’

‘You’re mistaken,’ I said abruptly and walked away quietly seething.

* * *

The dress rehearsal was a disaster. The beanstalk kept falling down, the giant couldn’t see out of his papier-maché head and Daisy the Cow kept tripping up over her huge dangling udder.

‘Ah think ah’ve put m’back out,’ complained Gerald Coe to his red-faced sister as they sat at the side of the stage.

‘Shurrup, Gerry,’ shouted Deirdre. She looked up at me as I rushed to put the finishing artistic touches to the giant’s castle. ‘An’ soon you’ll be laughin’ on t’other side o’ y’face, Mr ’Eadteacher.’

It was almost six o’clock when I called in for petrol at Victor Pratt’s garage. He was just shutting up for the holiday.

‘Hello, Victor,’ I said. ‘I’ve just met your Kingsley.’

‘ ’E’s allus been a character ’as Uncle Kingsley,’ said Victor.

‘Oh, yes?’

‘ ’E were kiss o’ death, were our Kingsley, during World War Two.’

‘Why was that?’ I asked.

‘ ’E were a Desert Rat … Arrived on a Sunday an’ captured on Monday.’

‘Oh, that’s unfortunate,’ I said.

‘Word ’ad it that t’Germans gave ’im back on Tuesday,’ added Victor gloomily. ‘ ’E were too much bother.’

It concerned me that Victor was always such a pessimist. ‘Victor,’ I said, ‘did you know that optimists live longer?’

‘Hmmf … serves ’em reight,’ muttered Victor and with that he took my ten-pound note and shambled away.

* * *

Back in the kitchen of Bilbo Cottage, a pleasant surprise awaited me and thoughts of Stan and Deirdre Coe were quickly forgotten. My kitchen, disorganized since the departure of Margaret and May for their Hogmanay in Scotland, sparkled and everything was tidy once again.

‘Beth, you’re a wonder,’ I said.

She looked great in hip-hugging jeans, Chris Evert trainers and a white polo-neck jumper.

I caught the aroma of appetizing food. ‘That smells good,’ I said.

‘There’s a casserole in the oven,’ she said, drying her hands on her apron. I gave her a kiss and she grinned. ‘You need a shower and your spectacles are covered in paint splashes.’

‘Can I eat first?’ I said.

‘Yes, but hurry,’ she said glancing at her watch. ‘The panto starts in an hour. I’m going to get changed.’ She hung her apron on the back of the door, grabbed a Leak & Thorpe carrier bag from the hallway and rushed upstairs.

Beth had visited Coney Street in York during the afternoon and selected a New Year’s Eve outfit from the ‘Ladies Pride’ selection. Apparently, the outfits were all half price with sizes ranging from 12 to 22. I recalled Laura telling me she was a size 12 but I had no idea what it meant in inches. As Beth occasionally swapped dresses with her sister, I guessed Beth must be the same size.

Forty minutes later, well-fed, showered and in my best grey suit with flared trousers and wide lapels, I stood in front of the hallway mirror trying to flatten the palm
tree
of brown hair on the crown of my head. Beth came downstairs looking stunning in a new light-grey dress with a tight-fitting bodice and a delicate lace choker. She stopped on the bottom step so that we were the same height and I held her in my arms.

‘Marry me … tonight,’ I said.

She smiled, checked her earrings and looked preoccupied. ‘I want to, Jack,’ she said softly, ‘but not tonight … not yet.’

I had learnt from past experience not to push too hard, so I helped her into her long leather coat and waited while she made adjustments to a scarf that exactly matched her green eyes.

The village hall was packed. Ruby was on the front row with a reluctant Ronnie and an excited Hazel. Joseph and Vera were on the third row, as Vera wanted to keep her distance from the ‘rowdy element’ at the back, namely, the Ragley Rovers football team, and had saved two seats for Beth and myself. Timothy, Victor and Kingsley Pratt had arrived early and secured the three seats close to the door that led backstage. Disconcertingly, Kingsley was on his hands and knees and clearly looking for something.

The pantomime was similar to previous years’ with uncoordinated dance routines, the curtains opening during scene changes and occasional shouts of ‘Speak up!’ from disgruntled members of the audience who wanted value for their fifty-pence tickets. However, the first act was the one destined to be remembered for many years to come. At the last minute, Gerald Coe complained he’d ‘put mi back out’ and couldn’t perform. A reluctant
Stan
Coe had been press-ganged into the rear end of the cow by the formidable duo of his sister and Felicity Miles-Humphreys.

So it was that when the character Jack walked on stage with Daisy the Cow he looked puzzled. According to the script, Daisy’s only line was ‘Moooo’.

‘There’s summat in yer udder,’ came a gruff voice from the back end.

‘Shurrup,’ hissed the front end.

‘It’s wriggling abart,’ shouted the back end.

‘Aaaaghh!’ screamed the front end. ‘Ah’ve been bitten! Aaaaghh!’

The audience roared with laughter and Daisy the Cow leapt in the air and ran off the stage. The prompter, Amelia Duff, looked at her script in surprise. It definitely said, ‘
Daisy – exit stage left
.’ However, on this occasion, the front end had exited stage left and the back end stage right.

Suddenly, Kingsley Pratt leapt to his feet. ‘Garfunkle, Garfunkle!’ he cried and rushed backstage through the side door.

Fortunately normal service was soon resumed, although Jack received five magic beans for a cow that was apparently grazing in a nearby field. In spite of Giant Blunderbuss’s head falling off when he attempted to climb the beanstalk, the pantomime limped successfully to its conclusion.

Finally, true to tradition, Nora Pratt was given the biggest round of applause … even when she sang ‘I Have a Dweam’ and the football team on the back row joined in. Like Nora, and much to the amusement of the
audience
, they sympathetically dropped the letter ‘r’ from the entire Abba hit record.

Predictably, the Coe family did not return for the traditional New Year’s Eve party that immediately followed the pantomime. They left with Gerald holding his aching back, a red-faced Stan carrying a cow costume and Deirdre rubbing a ferret bite on her ample backside.

In complete contrast, life was wonderful once again for the ferret-legger from Grimethorpe. Garfunkle, his prodigal ferret, had returned. After escaping from his cage just before the performance he had found a comfortable hiding place in Daisy’s udder. The rest of the story was already part of Ragley folklore.

At midnight, when Clint Ramsbottom tuned in his ghetto blaster to the chimes of Big Ben and balloons fell from the football goal nets attached to the ceiling, I held Beth in my arms. Around us a curious group gathered to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. It comprised Anne and John Grainger, Jo and Dan Hunter, Vera and Joseph Evans, the complete Pratt family, and, thankfully secure in their cage, two ferrets by the name of Simone and Garfunkle.

It was easy to tell which was which: Garfunkle was the one with a piece of Deirdre Coe’s knickers in its teeth!

Chapter Ten

New Brooms

Miss Valerie Flint, supply teacher, will take over from Tuesday, 6 January, as full-time teacher in Class 3 during Mrs Pringle’s maternity leave. A new telephone will be installed this week in the school office with an extension in the staff-room
.

Extract from the Ragley School Logbook:
Monday, 5 January 1981

WOOD SMOKE HUNG
over Ragley village like a pallbearer’s overcoat. Black and heavy, it tumbled over the pantile roofs. The Clean Air Act of 1956, following the Great Smog of 1952, had not yet been adopted by the villagers of Ragley. They preferred burning logs to smokeless fuel and Deke Ramsbottom dropped off another trailer load at the General Stores.

I sat at my desk, filled my fountain pen with Quink ink and shivered. Above my head, a mosaic of frost patterns etched the windows of the school office in their Victorian
casements
. Outside, the winter earth was frozen and no life or sound penetrated its hardness. Nature was gripped in an iron fist and the villagers of Ragley huddled round their log fires.

I took the school logbook from my bottom drawer, opened it to the next clean page and wrote the date, Monday, 5 January. The record for 1981 in the history of Ragley-on-the-Forest Church of England Primary School had begun.

It was early morning on the day before the start of the spring term. I leant back in my creaking leather-covered wooden chair and stared across the room at the neat rows of framed photographs on the office wall, mostly black and white but more recently in a colour fixative that, sadly, appeared to be fast-fading. My predecessor, John Pruett, had begun the collection in 1946 when he became headteacher and I had continued the tradition. So it was that, each year, all the pupils and teachers of Ragley School gathered in front of the entrance porch and were all captured at a moment in time – their time.

Now it was my turn to do my best for our village school. I didn’t want to be the headteacher who closed the school gates for the last time. The signs were not promising. Another letter had arrived from County Hall, informing me that a decision about the future of Ragley School would be considered by the Education Committee during the coming months. The word ‘considered’ rattled round my tired brain. The letter was signed by Miss Barrington-Huntley but on this occasion there was no personal postscript to lighten the import of the message. I guessed Beth had received the same letter.

Also, there was another pile of mail requesting information about our scheme of work for reading and writing. Some form of common curriculum for the nation’s schools appeared inevitable. As I pondered the outcome, suddenly the telephone on my desk rang. It was my first call of 1981 and I wondered who it could be on this bleak morning. I was surprised … the voice sounded almost hysterical.

‘If y’don’t ’urry up, on your ’ead be it.’

‘Who’s speaking, please?’ I asked.

‘Y’know very well who’s speaking.’ She had a high-pitched voice that sounded vaguely familiar. ‘Are y’comin’ t’clean my chimney or not?’

‘Chimney?’ I asked. ‘What chimney?’

‘
My
bloody chimney, y’soft ha’porth,’ she screamed. Suddenly she started coughing. ‘Oh no, there’s soot everywhere! If y’not ’ere in five minutes, ah’ll get a proper chimney-sweep.’

With that she rang off and I put down the receiver. It was clearly a wrong number. Then, still a little confused, I picked up my pen and began to write, ‘Miss Valerie Flint, supply teacher, will take over from Tuesday, 6 January, as full-time teacher in Class 3 during Mrs Pringle’s maternity leave.’

I sat back and stared at the page. Ragley School wouldn’t be the same without Sally. Times were changing.

By mid-morning I recalled a piece of advice given to me by John Pruett when I had started at Ragley. He said, ‘Remember to
walk the job
, Jack. Don’t get bogged down in your office.’ All the teachers were in their classrooms,
mounting
displays of work and tidying cupboards, so I decided to see how they were getting on.