04 Village Teacher (20 page)

They turned left down a corridor of polished tiles, and the nurse’s black lace-up shoes tapped out a brisk rhythm that exactly matched Sally’s heartbeat.

In the delivery room, the matron held Sally’s hand. ‘Sally,’ she said in a calm, reassuring voice, ‘don’t worry. Everything looks normal.’

Sally looked at the three other women in the ward, who appeared to be in their early twenties. ‘I feel ancient here,’ she breathed. ‘Is it safe at my age?’ There was a hint of uncertainty in her voice.

The matron put a cooling hand on Sally’s forehead.
‘You’re
a healthy woman. There’s no cause for concern.’ She glanced into the corridor, where Colin was down to his last humbug. ‘Shall I ask your husband to come in?’

‘Not just yet, thanks. Perhaps later,’ whispered Sally.

‘I understand,’ said the matron – and she did.

The conversation in The Royal Oak had drifted back to the bitterly cold weather.

‘It’s from Siberia, all this snow,’ said Kojak.

‘Bloody Russians!’ said Big Dave in disgust. ‘We don’t want no Russian snow ’ere.’

‘Y’reight there, Dave,’ agreed Little Malcolm. ‘We want proper Yorkshire snow.’

Everyone nodded in agreement and supped thoughtfully until Sheila broke the silence. ‘Ah knew a Russian once,’ she said, staring wistfully at a bottle of vodka, ‘name o’ Stan something.’

Don gave her a sharp glance.

‘ ’E never put no sugar in m’tea,’ continued Sheila in a little world of her own. ‘Said ah were sweet enough.’

‘Huh!’ said Don. He grabbed a pint pot and wiped it vigorously with his York City tea towel.

‘Like ah said, y’can’t trust Russians,’ said Big Dave.

‘ ’Ere, ’ere,’ said Little Malcolm. ‘Nowt worse.’

From out of a haze of Old Holborn tobacco smoke at the end of the bar, Old Tommy Piercy spoke up. Old Tommy tended to say very little but when he did everyone listened. ‘ ’Owd on, ’owd on, not so ’asty, young Malcolm,’ said Old Tommy. He tapped his pipe on the bar for order. ‘Y’forgettin’ southerners.’

In Old Tommy’s politically incorrect but perfectly
formed
world, southerners always ranked below Russians, Germans, French onion-sellers, Australian cricketers, teetotallers and vegetarians. Everyone nodded in agreement at his words of wisdom and proceeded to sup in silence. The oracle had spoken.

‘Mrs Pringle, we have three trainee midwives who would like to attend the birth … if you have no objection.’

Sally blinked through her perspiration and nodded. The question had appeared rhetorical anyway.

The matron beckoned them in and they stood there in a line, two slim young women and a youthful dark-haired man with an attempt at a first moustache who looked as though he had just been let out of school for the day. He blinked nervously and stared in apparent horror at the scene before him.

They observed with varying degrees of emotion. The two young women seemed to take it in their stride. However, the young man suddenly found himself in a nightmare world of starched caps, white wellies, red rubber aprons and pregnant women with their legs in stirrups. By the time the midwife used a hook to break the waters he was having second thoughts about his choice of career.

Suddenly, the pace of events increased.

By now Sally had begun to scream so loudly the walls rattled. Also, much to Colin’s dismay, she yelled that if he even considered trying for another baby she would personally castrate him with his new mole-grip pliers.

‘You tell ’im, luv,’ muttered one of the female trainee midwives.

‘Use this, Sally,’ said the midwife. ‘Gas and air – it’ll help.’ Two cylinders were fixed on a trolley alongside the bed. Sally held the black rubber mask to her face and breathed the welcome gas in.

Colin had gone grey, then green, and was now chewing the inside of his face mask.

‘The head’s out …’ said the midwife. ‘The shoulders are out …’ Colin slipped gently on to the floor. ‘And the husband’s out!’

This was followed by the cries of the two female trainee midwives. They were supporting their male colleague under his armpits and dragging him out of the room. He had fainted as well.

‘Men!’ muttered the midwife as she proceeded calmly.

She was a large, experienced, formidable woman with hands like coal shovels but with the dexterity of a seamstress. After cutting the umbilical cord and checking the baby’s breathing, everything seemed well. The child was wrapped in a green cloth and given to Sally.

The midwife’s demeanour softened for a brief moment and she smiled. ‘Sally,’ she said softly, ‘you have a beautiful baby girl.’

What happened next was a blur to Sally. She simply felt so tired. From the delivery room, she soon found herself in a ward with other mothers and their babies.

Baby Pringle reappeared, washed clean and wearing a small white nightie open at the back and a terry-towelling nappy held together with a large safety pin. She was so tiny, a little bundle of humanity on a cellular blanket in what looked like a Perspex fish tank. The pink tags on her wrist and ankle announced that she weighed seven
pounds
and one ounce and that she had been born at 4.00 a.m. on 3 February 1981.

Sally looked at Colin, who was now recovered. ‘We have a daughter,’ she said.

Colin was about to add, ‘With ginger hair,’ but thought better of it. After all, he was a New Age Eighties-man and he knew he had to be sensitive.

On Tuesday morning a monochrome world of winter stretched out before me. A tracery of silver frost rimed every twig on the still, frozen trees, while rooks and starlings settled on the parallel shadows in the distant ploughed fields. However, in the far corner of my garden, aconites and snowdrops lifted the spirit and gave hope of warmer days to come.

I was further cheered to see nine-year-old Debbie Clack carrying a large armful of furry willow catkins for Valerie Flint’s nature table. Her mother, Mrs Cynthia Clack, was hurrying up the drive with her and I remembered I had asked her to call in to see me.

‘It was about your Debbie’s PE kit, Mrs Clack,’ I said in the school entrance hall.

‘ ’E’s ’opeless, is my Charlie, Mr Sheffield,’ said Mrs Clack as she rummaged in her shopping bag. ‘Anyway, ’ere’s some PE kit for our Debbie. Ah went to t’Co-op.’

‘Well, I’m really pleased, Mrs Clack. Debbie loves the netball lessons with Mrs Hunter and I was a bit concerned when I received this note from your husband.’ I took it from my pocket. It read: ‘Please excuse our Debbie from netball but we can’t afford the PE kit.’ I gave her the scruffy piece of paper. ‘And it didn’t help
that
it’s been written on the back of a betting slip, Mrs Clack.’

‘Don’t you worry, Mr Sheffield,’ said the determined Mrs Clack, ‘ah’ll give ’im what-for when ’e comes home.’

At that moment, and blissfully unaware that he wouldn’t be getting his usual Tuesday night pie, chips and mushy peas followed by jam roly-poly pudding and custard, Charlie Clack, Ragley’s finest car salesman, was in full flow with a browbeaten bank clerk in the Ford garage in Easington.

‘This is Britain’s best-selling small car,’ recited Charlie, ‘the fantastic Ford Escort that goes from thirty to fifty in eleven-point-three seconds, an’ wi’ its thirteen ’undred engine, square headlights, matt-black grill an’ ’ound-stooth up’olstry, y’looking at t’car of the Eighties.’ Charlie gave his customer a glassy-eyed stare of holier-than-thou sincerity while at the back of his mind he was desperate to know the result of the three-thirty from Market Rasen.

I walked with Mrs Clack to the main entrance door and opened it for her. As she stepped out into the frozen world, she shook her head and growled at the mothers sheltering under the porch, ‘Men … who needs ’em?’ and all the mothers nodded vigorously in agreement.

I stepped back in alarm. Above my head the spikes of silver icicles hung from the porch like shark’s teeth and I made a mental note never to get on the wrong side of Mrs Clack.

* * *

Suddenly the office telephone rang and Vera seemed to be asking a barrage of questions. ‘Thank you, Colin, and congratulations. Send Sally our love and we’ll visit tomorrow evening.’

Ruby was polishing the handle of the office door and had heard every word. ‘It’s a girl,’ she shouted to me, ‘Mrs Pringle’s ’ad a baby girl,’ and she dashed off to tell Shirley and Doreen in the kitchen and then Anne, Jo and Valerie.

We all gathered in the office and Vera gave us chapter and verse of the night’s events.

Throughout the day it dominated our conversations and, eventually, at the end of school Ruby came into my classroom and began to sweep the floor.

‘Good news about Mrs Pringle, Mr Sheffield,’ said Ruby, leaning on her broom.

‘Wonderful news, Ruby,’ I said, looking up from my marking.

‘Teks m’back t’me an’ Ronnie,’ said Ruby with a faraway look in her eyes. ‘Ah were proper smitten with ’im, Mr Sheffield. Ah thought ’e were real ’andsome. Then ah fell for a baby an’ that were that.’

‘How did you meet Ronnie?’ I asked.

‘It were m’sister, Rose, Mr Sheffield. She introduced me to ’im.’

‘I didn’t know you had a sister, Ruby,’ I said.

‘Oh yes, Mr Sheffield. Lovely lass, is our Rose. She ’as a knicker stall on Thirkby market, an’ ’er ’ouse is allus spotless wi’ lovely crisp sheets an’ them nice toiletries what she pinches out o’ ’otels.’

‘Sounds a lovely lady,’ I said.

‘Y’reight there, Mr Sheffield,’ said Ruby and wandered off into the corridor, assuming she had finished sweeping my classroom floor, which, of course, she hadn’t.

Meanwhile, by Wednesday lunchtime Sally was learning how to breast-feed.

Dr Davenport had called in to check the stitches and he was followed by ‘Booby-Sue’, the resident expert.

‘What Booby-Sue doesn’t know about breast-feeding isn’t worth knowing,’ said Matron. She was correct.

Gradually, Sally learnt to alternate, left then right.

Back in the Ragley staff-room, a strange sight met my eyes. Dan Hunter was stretched out on the carpet with his legs in the air, while Jo was shaking his trouser leg as if her life depended on it.

‘Sorry, Jack,’ said Dan, looking up at me and clearly very embarrassed. ‘I just called in and I know this looks odd … but needs must, as they say.’

‘I’ll come back later,’ I said, hurrying to close the door.

‘No, Jack,’ explained Jo, very red in the face, ‘it’s really quite simple. We need money to buy a present for Sally’s baby and it’s too late for either of us to go to the bank. There’s some change in Dan’s truncheon pocket and the only way to get it out is through gravity!’

With a final shake, fifty-pence pieces and other small coins began to trickle out one by one from the long, narrow pocket.

‘Spare a copper?’ said Anne, who had arrived at that
moment
and seemed completely undeterred by the demonstration of police gymnastics.

Shortly before visiting time we all descended on the hospital waiting room. I was clutching a bag of grapes and Beth had wrapped up a beautiful Babygro outfit in white tissue paper. Vera was showing Anne Grainger a little white cardigan she had knitted; Dan Hunter, rather self-consciously, was holding a soft toy bunny rabbit and Jo was taking the price tag off a plastic changing mat. Ruby had crocheted some tiny bootees and adorned them with pink ribbons, while Valerie had a large envelope containing a voucher for baby clothes.

From where we sat, we were able to hear an interesting conversation in the ward beyond. A lively five-year-old girl, holding her grandmother’s hand, walked confidently up to her mother’s bed and sat down. Looking at her grandmother’s lined face, in a loud voice, she asked, ‘How old are you, Grandma?’

‘I’m too old to remember,’ she replied.

‘Well, Grandma, if you can’t remember, all you have to do is look in the back of your pants. Mine say five to six.’ She nodded sagely, then turned to her mother. ‘Mummy, if you’re very good will the nurses let you bring him home?’ she asked.

A nurse pulled shut a curtain around the bed, but we could hear the continuing conversation.

‘Yes, darling. This is your brother and he’ll be coming to live with us.’

There was a pause. Then, ‘What’s Mummy doing now, Grandma?’ asked the little girl.

‘She’s feeding your baby brother with milk,’ said her grandmother gently.

‘Yesterday Mummy was feeding him with the other one.’

‘Yes … Your mummy can choose which one,’ came the cautious reply.

‘Oh, I see,’ said the little girl. ‘So is one for hot milk and the other for cold milk?’

It was a happy group that took turns to see Sally and her baby, who, surprisingly, hadn’t got a name yet. Eventually, after much cooing, examining fingers and toes and agreeing there is nothing softer than a baby’s skin, we drove home. Occasionally, I glanced across at Beth and wondered if she was thinking the same.

After the regulation ten days in hospital, Sally was allowed to leave. Colin parked the car outside the entrance and helped her down the steps and into the back seat. Meanwhile, a self-assured nurse followed with the baby, warmly dressed in a Babygro outfit with press-studs, a white shawl wrapped over her head, and passed her to Sally. The tiny girl had a name now, a beautiful name: it was Grace.

As they turned on to the A19 and drove out of York, Colin looked anxious and sucked a humbug furiously.

‘Are you all right, Colin?’ asked Sally.

‘Sort of,’ mumbled Colin.

‘What is it?’ Sally asked firmly.

‘Well, you know the washing machine …’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve done some washing.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘And I’ve read the instructions,’ he said with an air of desperation. ‘In fact, quite a few times.’

‘And?’

‘I can’t seem to be able to open the door to get it out.’

‘How long has the washing been in there?’ asked Sally evenly, trying not to hyperventilate.

‘Five days,’ said Colin forlornly.

Sally said nothing.

That was the problem with men, she thought. They were, well, just men.

Chapter Twelve

Beauty and the Blacksmith

School closed today for the one-week half-term holiday with 88 children registered on roll. The hinges are broken on the main entrance door and Miss Evans arranged for repairs to be completed while school is closed
.