06 Educating Jack (3 page)

‘That’s good news,’ I said. ‘Congratulations. I knew you’d do it.’

‘Thanks … and are you
sure
you don’t mind?’ she asked, a little cautiously.

‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘I’m thrilled for you. It’s what you wanted.’

‘Yes, it is,’ she said. ‘Well, must rush. See you tonight. There are some chops in the fridge if you’re home first. Bye,’ and the line went dead.

‘Something to celebrate?’ queried Vera.

‘Beth’s on that degree course in Leeds,’ I said.

‘She’ll go far, just you wait and see,’ said Vera as she heated the milk for our coffee on the single electric ring.

At lunchtime, Shirley Mapplebeck, the school cook, looked concerned. ‘We’ve got eighty-six on roll, Mr Sheffield, an’ only fifty-seven are staying f’school dinners – so, sadly, it’s more packed lunches.’ Since the cost of a school dinner had gone up to fifty pence our numbers had dropped and it was often the case that the children who most needed a hot meal weren’t getting one.

‘So we’re trying t’introduce
choice
, Mr Sheffield,’ said Shirley, ‘to make t’meals more interestin’ for t’children.’

When I queued up for my lunch Shirley’s assistant, Mrs Doreen Critchley, was serving the sweet course. The muscles in her mighty forearms bulged as she lifted another tray of jam sponge on to the counter.

‘D’you want custard?’ growled Mrs Critchley.

‘Oh, well, er, what are my choices?’ I asked hesitantly.

Mrs Critchley gave me the look that regularly caused Mr Critchley to quake in his boots. ‘
Yes
or
No
,’ she replied bluntly. Mrs Critchley was always economical in her use of the English language.

After lunch, in the staff-room, Vera was scanning the front page of her
Daily Telegraph
and shaking her head in dismay. A sixteen-year-old girl, caned by her headteacher for smoking, had complained to the European Court of Human Rights that the punishment was ‘inhuman’ and therefore ‘unlawful’. Also, Berkshire Education Authority had announced that Buddhism was to be taught in their schools. ‘I wonder what it’s all coming to,’ murmured Vera to herself as she picked up her cup of Earl Grey tea.

‘So what do you think of the new caretaker, Vera?’ asked Sally.

Vera paused for a moment, clearly intending to choose her words carefully. ‘Well, Mrs Earnshaw is definitely
different
to Ruby,’ she said with a knowing look. She held up a sheet of paper covered in childlike printing. ‘And I’ve just removed her notice from our crockery shelf.’ It read:

AFTER TEA BREAK

STAFF SHOULD EMPTY POT

AND STAND UPSIDE DOWN

ON DRAINING BOARD

I grinned. ‘Yes, it does seem a bit extreme, Vera.’

‘Precisely, Mr Sheffield,’ said Vera and dropped the notice into her wicker waste basket. ‘I’ll have a word, shall I?’

It was during afternoon school that Patience Crapper made her mark. While Anne was busy in the classroom, Patience blocked up the sink in the reception class cloakroom with her leg warmers and water was swimming everywhere on the tiled floor.

‘Oh no!’ said Anne and immediately asked Vera to contact Mrs Earnshaw to clear up the mess.

‘And your boots and socks are soaked, Patience,’ she said. ‘Take them off and we’ll dry them on the children’s washing line.’

During afternoon break, in the staff-room, Anne was quietly fuming. ‘I’ll give her patience,’ she muttered.

Sally looked up from her
Art & Craft
magazine. ‘Patience,’ she said, ‘the state of endurance under difficult circumstances.’

‘Too true,’ said Anne through gritted teeth.

At the end of school, the parents of the children in the reception class wandered into school to collect their offspring. While Anne was talking to Mrs Crapper, Vera saw Patience trying to put on her pixie boots.

‘Come on, I’ll help you,’ said Vera.

After a huge struggle Vera managed to pull on both boots. ‘They don’t fit very well, do they?’ she said, getting a little exasperated.

‘’Cause they’re on t’wrong feet,’ said Patience.

‘Oh dear,’ said Vera and pulled them off. Getting them on again seemed an even greater struggle. Vera was feeling exhausted.

‘What about m’leg warmers?’ asked Patience.

‘Leg warmers?’ said Vera. ‘Where are they?’

‘In m’boots,’ said Patience.

‘In your boots!’ exclaimed Vera. ‘Why are they in your boots?’

‘’Cause Miss said put ’em there t’keep ’em safe,’ said Patience in a matter-of-fact tone.

‘Oh no,’ said Vera, pulling off the boots once again.

Eventually, fully attired with leg warmers and boots, Patience tottered off with her mother.

Back in the staff-room we all gathered to relate the events of the first day and Vera regaled us with her story of the pixie boots. Her patience had finally run out. She half closed her eyes and quoted from memory, ‘Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.’

‘Point taken, Vera,’ said Anne.

‘First Timothy, chapter one, verse sixteen,’ said Vera.

‘And that’s the problem, Vera …
eternal life
.’

‘Ah,’ said Vera as the penny dropped.

We all stared as, for no obvious reason, Vera suddenly put her arms round Anne and gave her a hug. ‘I understand, Anne,’ she said kindly. ‘I’ve just been through the same thing, except another decade down the line. I sent you a card in the holidays.’

‘Yes, thanks Vera,’ said Anne, ‘as you always do.’

‘And without a number on it,’ added Vera quietly.

There was a pause as Anne nodded.

‘Ah, I see,’ said Sally.

‘Me too,’ said Jo.

‘Well, I don’t,’ I said.

They all gave me that ‘well-he’s-only-a-man’ look, and shook their heads.

‘Oh, Jack, haven’t you worked it out yet?’ said Anne. ‘I loved being in my forties … and now I’m
bloody
fifty!’

It was then I realized that the problem with patience is that some days are better than others. It was also the first and last time I ever heard my deputy head swear.

The Revd Joseph Evans recommenced his weekly RE lesson. Major Forbes-Kitchener, school governor, visited school to discuss tomorrow’s Harvest Supper. County Hall requested responses to their discussion document ‘The Need for a Common Curriculum’
.

Extract from the Ragley School Logbook:

Friday, 17 September 1982

VERA TOOK HER
two-pint baking dish from the kitchen cupboard, propped her handwritten recipe book alongside it and then paused to look out of the vicarage kitchen window. Whispers of morning sunlight flickered through the branches of the high elms in the nearby churchyard.

It was Friday, 17 September, the day before the annual Harvest Supper in the village hall, and there was the small matter of an apple courting cake. Vera wrote a list of ingredients to purchase at Prudence Golightly’s General Stores & Newsagent, called to her brother, Joseph, to hurry up, checked her appearance in the hall mirror, bade a fond farewell to her three cats, Jess, Treacle and Maggie, then walked out to face a new day that she was destined never to forget.

A mile away on Ragley High Street, the queue of villagers in the General Stores was becoming restless as ten-year-old Heathcliffe Earnshaw and his nine-year-old brother Terry finally made an important decision.

Heathcliffe clutched a five-pence piece and stared intently at the glass jars of sweets, including sherbet dips, penny lollies, giant humbugs, dolly mixtures, aniseed balls, chocolate butter dainties, jelly babies and liquorice torpedoes. ‘Two lic’rice bootlaces
please
, Miss Golightly,’ said Heathcliffe, ‘an’
please
can we ’ave three penn’th o’ aniseed balls
please
in two bags,
please
.’ Heathcliffe always emphasized the word
please
when he spoke to the kindly sixty-five-year-old Miss Golightly. She appreciated good manners and he gave her his best fixed smile. It was the one he had perfected over the years and also the one he had been told by his Aunt Mavis from Doncaster that, if he kept doing it, his face would stay like that.

‘And here’s a sherbet lemon for being such polite boys,’ said Miss Golightly.

‘Thank you, Miss Golightly,’ said the two brothers in muffled unison as they left the shop, sucking their sweets with occasional synchronized crunching.

Next in the queue was Betty Icklethwaite with her five-year-old daughter, Katie. ‘Ah want t’spend a penny,’ said Katie.

‘Everything on the bottom shelf is a penny,’ said Miss Golightly, pointing to the liquorice laces, gobstoppers and penny chews.

‘No,’ said Mrs Icklethwaite, her cheeks flushing rapidly. ‘I think she actually
does
want t’spend a penny, Miss Golightly … if y’take m’meaning,’ and she grabbed her daughter’s hand and rushed out.

Finally I reached the front of the queue. ‘Good morning, Miss Golightly,’ I said. The diminutive lady had a set of wooden steps behind the counter and she stepped up to be on the same level as me.

Prudence knew her customers well and had already folded my copy of
The Times
. ‘And good morning to you, Mr Sheffield,’ she said. ‘I trust
Mrs
Sheffield is well.’

‘Fine thank you, Miss Golightly.’ Then I looked up at Yorkshire’s best-dressed teddy bear sitting on his usual shelf next to a tin of loose-leaf Lyons tea and an old advertisement for Hudson’s soap and Carter’s Little Liver Pills. ‘And good morning, Jeremy.’

Jeremy was her lifelong friend and Prudence took great pride in making sure he was always well turned out. On this bright and busy day he was wearing a white shirt, blue bow-tie and a striped apron. Miss Golightly followed my gaze. ‘Yes, we’ve been stocktaking this morning,’ she said as she took my twenty pence and placed it in the drawer of the ancient till.

I climbed back into my Morris Minor Traveller and, as I drove past the village green towards the school gates, I pulled up and wound down my window. ‘Be careful, Jimmy,’ I shouted. Ten-year-old Jimmy Poole was throwing a stick into the branches of the horse-chestnut trees and at his feet a pile of glossy conkers had burst out of their spiky shells.

‘Ith all right, Mithter Theffield,’ lisped Jimmy. ‘Ah’m juth thowing my thithter ’ow t’collect conkerth,’ he shouted back cheerfully. ‘Anyway ah’ve finithed now,’ he added as he hid his special stick under a pile of leaves for another day. After all, when you’re ten years old you never know when a good stick might come in useful. I smiled and drove into the car park without comment, recalling that I had done exactly the same thing thirty years ago.

The school was welcoming on this autumn morning. In the border outside Sally’s classroom, chrysanthemums, red, bronze and amber, were bright in the low September sunshine and Mrs Earnshaw was sweeping the first of the autumn leaves from the stone steps leading to the entrance door.

Outside the school office our local vicar, the Revd Joseph Evans, a tall, thin figure with a clerical collar and a sharp Roman nose, was looking anxiously at his lesson notes. Joseph came in once each week to lead ‘spiritual guidance’ as he called it, or, to be more precise, to read Bible stories to the children with a follow-up discussion. While Joseph was calm and confident with his congregation on a Sunday morning, somehow life wasn’t quite the same when he was faced with a class of young children. By morning break he was usually tearing out what was left of his grey hair.

Joseph had never married and was totally reliant on his well-organized elder sister. The two of them shared the beautifully furnished vicarage in the grounds of St Mary’s Church along with Vera’s three cats. It was well known that Maggie, a sleek black cat with white paws, was named after Vera’s political heroine, Margaret Thatcher. For Joseph, it was a life that filled him with contentment … that was, until he realized that the news of Vera’s marriage would change his world for ever. So it was that, on this peaceful September morning, his lesson with Sally Pringle’s class filled him with even more doubts. It had just occurred to him that his theme, ‘How to Get to Heaven’, might be a difficult concept for eight-and nine-year-olds.

At ten o’clock I was listening to Dean Kershaw reading his
Ginn Reading 360
story book when the ever-alert Theresa Ackroyd made an announcement. She delivered it without appearing to look up from her School Mathematics Project workcard concerning the difference between obtuse and acute angles. However, as Theresa had placed her chair strategically so that she never missed anything going on outside the classroom window, it was clear that she already possessed a meaningful and very practical understanding of angles, regardless of whatever peculiar name they were given. ‘Major’s posh car comin’ up t’drive, Mr Sheffield,’ she said with calm authority.

A large black classic Bentley purred into the car park. As usual, Major Rupert Forbes-Kitchener arrived in style from his stately home of Morton Manor and a chauffeur in a smart grey uniform and a peaked cap got out and opened the rear door. As a school governor, the major was a regular visitor, even more so now that he and Vera were engaged to be married. ‘The potted plant, please, Tomkins,’ he said and the chauffeur took a beautiful orchid from the boot of the car. The major checked that every purple-white petal was perfect, walked into school and tapped on the office door.

Vera was filling the Gestetner duplicating machine with ink prior to sending out a note to parents about next month’s half-term holiday and she smiled when she saw who it was. ‘Rupert, what a lovely surprise.’

‘For you, my dear,’ he said and placed the orchid on the window ledge.

‘Thank you, it’s beautiful,’ said Vera. She replaced the lid on the can of ink and walked over to the window to admire the beautiful plant in more detail. ‘But I wasn’t expecting you.’

Rupert removed his Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hat to reveal a head of close-cropped, steel-grey hair, then glanced down nervously at his size-ten brown brogues, highly polished to a military shine. ‘I couldn’t wait any longer, Vera,’ he said. ‘I simply had to speak to you. It’s been on my mind all week … in fact, I’ve thought of little else since the accident.’