Mr Campion's Fault (4 page)

W
hen she first caught sight of Ash Grange, Perdita was reminded of her father-in-law’s assertion that a fair amount of ‘wuthering’ took place in Yorkshire and yet was immediately reassured that the house was clearly sturdy enough to withstand the slings and arrows of the most atrocious weather. In fact, she was quite prepared to believe the house would be impermeable to light artillery.

Local antiquarians would cheerfully claim that Ash Grange could trace its origins back to a fifteenth-century farmhouse which was expanded and possibly fortified as a sturdy manor house during the seventeenth century. Mysteriously, no traces of either incarnation had ever been reliably identified and so local pride had to be content with a mere one hundred years of documented history. There were many among the mining community of Denby Ash who took delight in pointing out that the village’s brass band pre-dated the Big House and its rather privileged (if not downright stuck-up) occupants by a good thirty years.

Such a claim to historical precedence was beyond dispute as the earliest Minute Books of the Denby Ash Colliers Brass Band dated from 1838 whereas all architectural guides to the county placed the construction of Ash Grange as part of the neo-Gothic revival much favoured by industrially wealthy Victorians in the 1860s, and most dated the house from 1868, its construction coming immediately after that of the church of St James the Great at the opposite end of the village which straddled the road from Huddersfield to Wakefield.

Described, confusingly, as ‘part Georgian, part neo-Gothic or perhaps Jigsaw Gothic’ in style, Ash Grange was solidly built of dark Yorkshire sandstone blocks with grey-black stone roofing tiles, its powerful vertical lines drawing the eye of the awestruck beholder up to the pointed arches of its first-floor oriel windows and then on to the crenellated battlements under the roof and beyond to the twin towers of clustered chimneys. The only softening of the Grange’s severe, rather militaristic façade was an ornate ten-segment rose window. This circular aperture, which would be called a Catherine Window in a Catholic church, was – or so the architectural journals agreed – an inferior copy of the White Rose window designed by church architect John Loughborough Pearson for Christ Church at Appleton-le-Moors in distant North Yorkshire. The window perched above a stone porch in which nestled a solid oak door and, between the porch and window, a coat of arms which now designated the Grange as a place of learning. In a painted stone relief were four white roses (were there any other kind in Yorkshire?) at the corners of an open book whose pages displayed the two words of the motto of Ash Grange School for Boys:
Turpe Nescire
, which can be translated as ‘It is a disgrace to be ignorant’ although one retiring science teacher had suggested it be expanded to read ‘It is no disgrace to be quiet and ignorant.’ His suggestion had met with stern disapproval on school grounds except in the senior staff room where his last few days in post were greeted with constant winks and nods of harmonious agreement.

The actual house – the Big House – formed only a small part – perhaps a sixth – of the area of Ash Grange School. To the rear of the original mansion, where once a kitchen garden and a large brick coalhouse had taken pride of place (the house had been built with the profits from coal so domestic supplies of the noble fuel were suitably protected), there now extended large blocks of concrete and glass rectangular buildings which served as classrooms and offices, their windows giving panoramic views to the east, over the tarmac tennis courts, a cricket pitch, two rugby fields, a pavilion and a brick changing room block before what had once clearly been a manicured parkland gave way to the rising ground and mixed foliage of Denby Wood. It was Denby Wood which had over the years effectively camouflaged from the view of the Grange two of the three sources of the wealth which had built it: the collieries known as Shuttle Eye and Caphouse.

The Victorian builders of the Grange had deliberately sited the house so that the winding towers and slag heaps of the pits which paid their bills were effectively hidden from polite society, or at least the society which congregated around the Grange. The third colliery, Grange Ash, which formed the apex of the industrial ‘black triangle’ of Denby Ash, was more problematic for the delicate sensibilities of the inhabitants of the new house as it lay to the south of the site chosen, across the Huddersfield road and even in the 1860s its pyramidal spoil heap was rising to heights which would have impressed a pharaoh. To disrupt, if not completely mask, this unsightly sightline, Victorian landscapers planted a phalanx of yew trees to guard the twisted driveway by which the Grange was approached. For almost forty years this man-made extension to Denby Wood protected the owners and staff of Ash Grange from the dirty and noisy reminders that their luxury was provided by the sweat of men, often naked, working in cramped, dark and dangerous conditions underground, and of women and children pushing and pulling tubs of black gold at the pit head. Yet with the introduction of motor lorries to transport that solid harvest around the turn of the century, Grange Ash colliery and the very coal which was being ripped from it began to take revenge on the Big House. Not even the thick, disciplined ranks of yew trees could cushion the incessant rumble of heavily-laden coal trucks bound for the mills and railway sidings in Huddersfield or the dusty rattle of their return journey to the pit. Gradually the yew trees became discoloured from the constant powdering of coal dust as fine as icing sugar, which reached as far as the Grange itself, darkening the windows. Moreover, the procession of trucks on the Huddersfield road produced a seismic disruption producing potholes and cracks not only in the main artery through the village but along the length of the mazey driveway, resulting in many a twisted ankle and broken carriage wheel, especially in winter. More than one skittish and superstitious scullery maid would maintain that such disturbance in the very fabric of their surroundings was divine retribution for greedy pit owners digging too deep.

Now the pit owners were gone; politically thanks to nationalization in 1947 and in reality thanks to generous compensation payments by the government to the owning family, which, in the words of their accountant, had made them ‘terminally well-off’ and prompted a move to the island of Guernsey.

A well-founded fear of punitive death duties and a fifty-two per cent rate of surtax, and the less accurate predictions of a lifetime of socialist election victories ensured that the sale of Ash Grange went through smoothly and the energetic and idealistic Brigham Armitage, assisted by his wife, Celia, quickly began to convert the house into a school.

Having left the motorway, the young Campions had approached Denby Ash from the direction of Barnsley which necessitated driving the length of the village to reach Ash Grange. Perdita slowed to within the regulation thirty mph limit in order to familiarize herself with the local geography, and the first landmark they encountered after passing the official white metal sign which confirmed they were entering Denby Ash was, to Rupert’s delight, a pub.

A large wooden sign in red lettering across its side wall announced proudly that it sold Barnsley Bitter; a smaller, traditional inn sign hanging from a corner iron bracket identified it as the Green Dragon. It was a big, detached brick building strategically placed in the ‘v’ of a fork where, according to a modest fingerpost sign, the Barnsley road met the Wakefield road. A large white plastic banner hung across the frontage of the pub, proclaiming without modesty in large red print that the establishment was ‘Famous For Basket Meals’.

‘That looks like the local restaurant,’ chirped Rupert, ‘though I’m not sure I can remember how I liked my baskets cooked.’

‘Don’t be a clot,’ said Perdita, indicating left and waiting for a coal lorry to thunder by before she turned, ‘or a snob, and if we should go there don’t you dare ask for soup-in-a-basket. I’m used to your sense of humour but there’s no need to impose it on the natives.’

From the fork guarded by the Green Dragon, which sat like a stopper on the bottle that was Denby Ash, the road rose westward into a fading afternoon sun in a long hill running along the side of a valley. As was almost traditional in English villages, the nearest building to the pub was a church, set on a slight rise away from the road, a free-standing wooden signboard displayed the name of the church and details of its services. Rupert decided to show he was paying attention.

‘I spy, with my little eye … the church of St James the Great, and next to it there’s the school!’

‘That’s the village primary school,’ Perdita said patiently. ‘Ash Grange is at the other end of the village at the top of this hill. Godfather Brigham said if we kept going we’d come it eventually.’

Rupert leaned forward in the passenger seat, turning his head to give a running commentary on his view through the windscreen and his side window.

‘I spy a row of houses, then another and another,’ he said. ‘In fact, if it wasn’t for those little alleyways between them it could be one long continuous sausage of a house.’

‘Ginnels,’ said Perdita primly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘They call them ginnels up here – those passageways between the rows of houses. It’s how people get to their back doors.’

Rupert, suitably impressed at his wife’s local knowledge, concentrated on the left side of the road where more modern houses were clustered in small cul-de-sacs where the contours of the hill had allowed. Between them were detached buildings set back from the edge of the road as the church had been, and in Rupert’s personal game of ‘I Spy’, many of them indeed seemed to be churches.

‘I spy with my little eye something called the Zion Chapel. Do you think they placed it deliberately near the working men’s club on the principle of know-your-enemy? And now my little eye can’t quite believe it’s now spying a Wesleyan Chapel as well, not to mention’ – he paused for dramatic effect – ‘a
Primitive
Methodist Chapel, whatever that is. The churches believe in outnumbering the pubs round here, don’t they? It’s not like Norwich, is it?’

‘Norwich?’ laughed his wife. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘Isn’t it Norwich which has a church for every Sunday but a pub for every day of the year?’ posed Rupert.

‘I’ll take your word on that,’ chuckled Perdita, ‘but I wouldn’t worry about the bodies and souls of the local inhabitants here. Their needs, both spiritual and temporal, seem to be well catered for and there’s another pub to even up the odds.’

‘So there is.’

Although clearly older and more picturesque, the Sun Inn made no attempt to compete with the bold claims of its larger competitor, yet it occupied, at the western edge of the village, a similar strategic position guarding the solid stone bridge which carried the road on towards Huddersfield just as the Green Dragon protected the fork in the road at the eastern end. Rupert imagined the two pubs almost as victualing customs posts guarding the entrances to Denby Ash, with the large working men’s club he had ‘spied’ exactly halfway between the two acting as some sort of United Nation’s demarcation line. Perhaps there were gregarious customers who could not make the journey from one pub to the other without a refreshment break. Or perhaps the locals were so fiercely loyal to either the Sun or the Green Dragon that the issue divided the village and the idea of visiting both was akin to breaking a local taboo.

Then Rupert’s alcoholic reverie was shattered as Perdita accelerated and the Mini Cooper jumped over the hump of the stone bridge with stomach-plunging enthusiasm, as if joyous to be free of the village.

‘So that was Denby Ash,’ Perdita said cheerfully, thinking she had jolted, quite literally, her husband out of his irritating ‘I Spy’ mode.

‘But what the devil is
that
?’ said Rupert, pointing a finger at the windscreen, or rather the black, pyramidal peak which loomed suddenly large to their left.

‘That’s what they call a muck stack in these parts. Impressive, isn’t it?’

‘In a dark, satanic sort of way I suppose it is,’ admitted Rupert. ‘Is it a mountain of coal?’

‘I think it’s the stuff they pull out of the ground that
isn’t
proper coal – stuff nobody wants. Technically it’s “spoil” but it can still burn and some of these big muck stacks are permanently smoking, a bit like Vesuvius or Etna.’

‘They don’t blow up, though, do they?’ Rupert asked nervously, recalling a visit to Pompeii as an undergraduate.

‘Not usually, though there was that one which slid down the hill and caused the Aberfan disaster in Wales,’ Perdita said soberly.

‘God, that was awful; those poor children in that school.’

‘Don’t worry, dear – that couldn’t happen here. Ash Grange was the stately home of the mine owners once upon a time and they would have made sure they built it a safe distance away from any dirt or danger.’

Rupert studied his wife carefully, unconsciously imitating the expression his father adopted when he peered over the top of his spectacles at someone.

‘That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it, darling?’

‘Perhaps I’m getting more Bolshie the further north we come,’ Perdita said vaguely.

‘Then it’s a good job your godfather’s school isn’t in Scotland.’

‘In fact,’ said Perdita as she braked and indicated, ‘it’s right here.’

‘We are a small school,’ said Brigham Armitage, gripping the lapels of his Harris Tweed jacket as if they were the straps of a parachute, ‘and of course we are very young. Indeed, I suspect that your husband is older than we are.’

Perdita smiled, acknowledging the gallantry of her godfather, who knew perfectly well how old she was and that she too had seniority over his school.

‘We have three hundred and thirty boys on the school roll. They range from eleven to fifteen in age and we organize them in eleven forms each of platoon strength or as near as we can get. Ideally, we envisaged a proper House system, though we do not as yet have any distinguished old boys – or benefactors – after which we could name them. Were you in Kilbracken at Rugby, young Campion?’