05 Please Sir! (13 page)

‘Y’reight there, Don,’ said Little Malcolm: ‘Fenella Lovelace.’

‘By gum,’ said Don, clearly impressed. ‘Sounds like a film star.’

‘It does that,’ agreed Big Dave.

Sheila looked up from behind the bar at the giant binman and smiled. ‘So where did y’tek this movie star?’

‘Ah took’er to t’pictures an’ afterwards we ’ad a swift pint an’ a game o’ darts in t’Bay ’Orse at Monk Bar i’ York. Then we watched
Match o’ t’Day
,’ said Big Dave. ‘It were a good neight.’

The football team stared at him in amazement at this incredible news.

‘Y’played darts wi’ a woman?’ spluttered Shane Ramsbottom, nearly dropping his pint tankard.

‘An’ did y’show’er ’ow t’play?’ asked Chris ‘Kojak’ Wojciechowski, the Bald-Headed Ball Wizard.

‘Could she ’it t’board?’ asked Clint Ramsbottom, suddenly interested in this dramatic news. ‘’Cause women aren’t built f’darts,’ he added, casting an admiring glance at Sheila in her straining boob tube, who was now at the far end of the bar and fortunately out of earshot.

‘She sez she were in a women’s darts team in Barnsley,’ said Big Dave, ‘an’ she throws’er darts real fast. She’s only five-foot-two an’ i’ Barnsley she were called t’“Pocket Rocket”.’

Little Malcolm was pleased to hear he was two inches taller than Big Dave’s new girlfriend, but then a terrible thought struck him. ‘Dave … y’did beat ‘er?’

To their relief Dave nodded, but, unknown to them, their giant goalkeeper and male chauvinist secretly believed that Nellie had let him win after scraping the wire repeatedly on her finishing double. This was a secret Dave would never reveal. After all, there was a natural order to life and, in Big Dave’s politically incorrect world, women were good at cooking and never beat men at darts or dominoes.

The Education Welfare Officer, Roy Davidson, is monitoring the new admission Nathan Penny following concerns raised by staff members
.

Extract from the Ragley School Logbook:

Thursday, 3 December 1981

His name was Nathan. He was nine years old and he was alone.

It was the time of the fading of the light. A cold December mist swirled over Ragley village and its smoking chimneys and in the distance, over the purple bulk of the Hambleton hills, the setting sun glittered like beaten bronze. The days were short now. Winter had arrived.

At the back of the village hall the children’s playground was surrounded by high chain-link fencing. A pair of swings swung to and fro in the cold north wind and a few flakes of snow settled on a wooden seesaw and a rusty tubular-metal climbing frame. On the top step of a tall ancient slide Nathan Penny, clad in an old green anorak, was staring into the growing darkness. Around his neck was a loop of string from which hung a brass Yale key. As he rocked back and forth it swung like a pendulum and reflected the glow of the amber street lights.

Nathan had arrived at Ragley just after the half-term holiday from a primary school in Chapeltown on the outskirts of Leeds. He was a pale, skinny, nervous-looking boy and in spite of all our efforts he had not appeared to make any friends. His mother had got a part-time job at the local chocolate factory and always looked as if she carried the worries of the world on her shoulders. I had yet to meet her husband, John Penny, who I gathered was a locksmith, travelling the length and breadth of Yorkshire in search of new work.

It was the first Wednesday in December, another school day had ended and the pupils had drifted home. Nathan was one of our ‘latchkey’ children who arrived home
before
his parents, unlocked the front door and walked into an empty house.

Jennifer Penny turned off the High Street, flashed her torch on the gravelled pathway and walked with light, crunching steps towards the playground. She had panicked when she had arrived home from her shift at Rowntree’s and found that her son wasn’t there. Spotting him on the slide, she sighed with relief. ‘Nathan,’ she called out, ‘come ’ome. Y’ll catch y’death o’ cold.’

‘Is ’
e
there, Mam?’ said Nathan, his gaunt face pale in the shadows.

‘No luv, ’e’s not,’ she replied and turned away to hide fresh tears.

In the playground there was silence apart from the creaking of the swings.

‘Ah’ve got y’favourite f’tea,’ said Jennifer, more in hope than expectation.

‘So ’
e’s
not coming back tonight?’

Mrs Penny knew that scolding him would not work. This was one of his dark moods and she recognized the hunched shoulders, bowed head, and troubled eyes hidden behind his long black fringe. ‘No, luv,’ she said.

He stepped down. ‘Sorry, Mam,’ he said quietly.

She gave him a gentle hug. ‘Let’s go ‘ome.’

They walked up the High Street, cold and huddled together like wraiths in the darkness, and turned the corner of the council estate. Jennifer looked down at her only son and, once again, she felt the pain of a mother.

On Thursday morning, a soft white quilt of snow had carpeted the back road from Kirkby Steepleton to Ragley village and my Morris Minor Traveller made slow progress. Ruby the caretaker, wearing a tightly knotted headscarf, was brushing the steps in the entrance porch when I arrived at school.

‘’Morning, Ruby,’ I said. ‘You’re a saint.’

‘No rest for t’wicked, Mr Sheffield,’ said Ruby in a singsong voice. The freezing conditions clearly had no effect on this hardy Yorkshirewoman. She added a good sprinkling of salt to the stone steps as noisy conversation drifted out from the entrance hall. ‘It’s a bun fight in there,’ she said as I hurried into school.

A group of parents under the supervision of Sally were making costumes for the forthcoming nativity play. Meanwhile, their children sat in a group round the old pine table, making paper chains from coloured paper. The loops were held together with a generous dab of white rubber glue, which had a strange but appealing smell, and high-pitched chatter reverberated around the walls.

It was just before morning playtime when Theresa Ackroyd made her first announcement of the day. ‘PC ’Unter coming up t’drive, Mr Sheffield.’

Dan was Jo’s husband, a loyal friend and our popular village bobby. A huge six-feet-four-inch rugby player, he looked smart in his navy-blue uniform with a small coat of arms on each collar.

I stepped out of my classroom door and across the corridor to tell Jo that Dan was here. As I walked into Class 2 the boys and girls were chanting their tables – all except for seven-year-old Benjamin Roberts. I stood behind him and listened. The rest of the class were singing ‘Seven sevens are forty-nine’, while little Ben was humming ‘Dah, dah, dah, dee-dah’.

I leant over and whispered in his ear, ‘What are you doing, Ben?’

He looked up and gave me a relaxed smile. ‘Ah’m ’umming, Mr Sheffield.’

‘Yes, I can tell that, Ben, but
why
are you humming?’ I said, a little irritably.

Ben continued to be unperturbed. ‘Well, ah know t’tune, Mr Sheffield. It’s jus’ that ah don’t know t’words.’

I tried hard not to smile. It was clear Ben was not having the best of days. His ‘Explorers of the World’ topic folder was open in front of him. He had written, ‘Christopher Columbus discovered a miracle.’ To his credit he had looked up ‘miracle’ in his
New Oxford Dictionary
and the more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me that he was probably right.

I smiled at Jo as the bell rang. ‘Dan’s here,’ I said.

‘Oh, thanks,’ she said. ‘Wonder what
he
wants.’

Dan was waiting for me in the entrance hall, deep in thought and stroking his long, droopy moustache. He looked serious and was clearly on duty. ‘Jack, there’s been a burglary in Morton, next door to Beth’s cottage. I’ve checked her doors and windows and all seems well.’

‘Oh dear,’ I said, ‘that’s bad news.’

‘Thought you might want to let her know before she gets home,’ he said.

‘Thanks, Dan,’ I said. ‘I appreciate your letting us know.’

‘Anyway, must get back to the station … See you Saturday. Beth told Jo to come around six.’

‘OK, Dan, see you then.’

His little grey van bumped down the drive, turned right at the school gate and roared off up the Easington Road.

After I had telephoned Beth, the burglary was the main topic of discussion over lunch in the staff-room. Vera had just said, ‘What’s the world coming to?’ when there was a tap on the door. It was Roy Davidson, our Education Welfare Officer, calling in for his weekly visit. Roy, a tall, gaunt man in his mid-forties with a shock of prematurely grey hair, was a wonderful supporter of village schools and his knowledge of specialist educational support was second to none.

‘You mentioned …’ he checked his spiral notepad, ‘Nathan Penny,’ he said.

‘He’s in the library now if you want to have a word,’ I said.

We were very proud of our wide range of books, accumulated thanks largely to the generosity of the Parent–Teacher Association and the local community. Our school capitation had been reduced once again and we were surviving on just a few pence per child per day. The extra funds made a huge difference to the experiences we could provide for the children of Ragley village.

Nathan clearly loved books. I had made him library monitor and he spent much of his spare time tidying and labelling, but mainly reading. When I walked into the carpeted library area he was engrossed in
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
by C. S. Lewis.

‘This is Nathan,’ I said to Roy. ‘He’s a wonderful reader.’

‘Hello, Nathan,’ he said.

Nathan was thrilled to meet another grown-up who was interested in books. I left them to it, knowing that Roy’s perceptive, gentle questioning would reveal how best to help this introverted little boy.

Ten minutes later, Roy came back into the staff-room. ‘I could do with talking to his parents,’ he said, glancing down at his copious notes. ‘There’s something I can’t quite work out. His attendance is fine and there was no antisocial behaviour at his school in Leeds. Even so, the boy is clearly troubled.’

At the end of school I was in the office with Vera. She beckoned me over to the window. ‘Mr Sheffield, watch the new boy Nathan Penny. See what he does,’ she said. We peered out into the growing darkness. At the school gate Nathan took his
Ginn Reading 360
reading book and tucked it down the back of his shorts. When he was satisfied it was hidden from view he walked home.

Anne was collating her infant reading tests for end-of-term reports. ‘Jack, there’s something worrying about that little boy. I just can’t put my finger on it,’ she said.

Sally looked up from transcribing the sheet music of ‘We Three Kings’ into guitar chords for her beginners’ group. She looked thoughtful. ‘Perhaps we need to pull in a bit of additional support on this one, Jack. Better to be safe than sorry.’

‘Sally’s right, Jack,’ said Anne.

‘I agree,’ I said, ‘and in the meantime Roy Davidson wants to talk with his parents.’

‘Jack, his mother is coming in tomorrow lunchtime to help with the nativity costumes,’ said Sally. ‘Maybe you could have a word then.’

It was Friday lunchtime and a large group of mothers were busy making costumes in the entrance hall. Jennifer Penny, in between shifts at the factory, was among them, eager to support.

‘Excuse me, Mrs Penny. Any chance of a quick word?’ I said.

Soon we were in the school office discussing Nathan’s love of books. ‘John won’t allow no books in the ‘ouse, Mr Sheffield,’ she said quietly. ‘’E says that ’
e
didn’t need no books when ’e were a lad.’

‘And what do
you
think, Mrs Penny?’ I asked.

She sighed deeply and picked at her bitten fingernails. ‘Ah want t’give Nathan a chance in life, Mr Sheffield, an’ ah know ’e loves reading in your libr’y.’

‘He’s a good reader, Mrs Penny,’ I said, ‘and he seems to have a natural gift for writing – in fact, his poetry is exceptional.’

‘Ah read to’im when ah can, Mr Sheffield,’ she said, ‘but … not when ’is dad’s ’ome.’

‘I see,’ I said.

‘An’ y’can’t argue with him,’ she added a little nervously, rubbing her wrist. It was badly bruised.

‘Perhaps if I have a word with Mr Penny he might let Nathan take books home,’ I said.

‘Won’t make no difference, Mr Sheffield, an’ in any case ’e says when Nathan’s as tall as ’im ’e starts work. ’E says ’e doesn’t need books t’do manual work.’

The bell rang for afternoon school. ‘Thanks, Mrs Penny,’ I said. ‘I hope we can talk again.’

It was an impulse. At the end of school I gathered up the complete series of Narnia stories and put them in a carrier bag. Then I pulled on my duffel coat and old college scarf and set off for the council estate. When I reached Nathan’s house a huge man was emptying the contents of his van into a crowded garage. He stepped out quickly to meet me and blocked my way. ‘Yes?’ he said gruffly.

‘I’m Jack Sheffield from the village school,’ I said. ‘Are you Mr Penny?’