The Other Side of the Dale (25 page)

‘Hello, Mr Phinn,' he said cheerily. His face was brown and the great walrus moustache and shock of hair looked bleached.

‘Hello, Lord Marrick,' I replied. ‘You look as if you've been on holiday.'

‘Rome!' he snapped. ‘I've been to the “eternal city” and we had lovely weather. I went to receive a knighthood from the Pope for services to education. Now then, young man, what do you think about that?' Before I could answer he continued. ‘You are now looking at a Knight of the Order of St Sylvester, a rare honour, particularly for a non-Catholic' He lowered his voice before confiding, ‘The uniform's a bit over the top for me, mind you – bright red and black with a big cocked hat and ceremonial sword. I'm a lot happier in my tweeds, to be honest. But, as you can see, I am as pleased as Punch.'

‘Many congratulations,' I said and shook his hand. ‘Mrs Callaghan and the children will be celebrating, I'm sure. I bet they'd like to see you in the cocked hat.'

‘Yes, it was a memorable occasion, truly memorable. I shall never forget the moment when the Pope entered. His Holiness walked very slowly towards me and gently took my hand, shook it lightly and gave a slight smile and then, in perfect English, he asked me.'

‘Asked you what?' I enquired when Lord Marrick stopped speaking.

‘He asked me if they'd fixed the leaking roof at Pope Pius X Roman Catholic Primary School, Ribsdyke yet.'

‘Oh no!' cried Harold looking up from the memorandum he was reading. ‘It's the Fettlesham Show in a month. That is something I could well do without.'

‘Why?' I asked innocently. ‘It sounds really interesting. I've seen it advertised in every shop and post office in the county so it must be a pretty big affair. I thought I might spend a Saturday –'

‘Dear, oh dear,' sighed Harold, clearly not listening to a word I was saying. ‘It completely slipped my mind. The Fettlesham Show! Next month! Dear, oh dear!'

‘Harold!' I said in a loud voice. ‘What is so terribly upsetting about the Fettlesham Show?'

‘What is so terribly upsetting about the Fettlesham Show?' replied my colleague repeating my words with slow deliberation, ‘is that I have to spend all day Saturday manning the County Education Tent, answering numerous questions, sorting out intractable problems, giving advice on all manner of things and listening to interminable descriptions about little Johnny who can't read very well and little Janet who has difficulties with her number work. It's an endless, exhausting, frustrating and thoroughly tiresome business – that is what is so terribly upsetting about the Fettlesham Show, or, as the posters say, the Fine Fettlesham Show.'

‘Oh,' I mumbled.

Harold, now getting into his stride, pushed out his chin and gripped the edge of his desk. ‘There is usually a heated
altercation outside the Education Tent, which inevitably involves me, between the supporters of comprehensive education who berate me about the grammar schools and those who are in favour of grammar schools who berate me about the comprehensives. Last year the public school lobby got in on the act. It was a nightmare. It is something I could well do without.' He rested his large head in his great cupped hands and sighed sadly.

‘From the posters, I thought it was an agricultural show – horses, hounds, show jumping, dog competitions – that sort of thing? How does education come into it?'

‘It is, it is an agricultural show but there are all sorts of other things – displays and exhibitions, trade stands and information tents, arts and crafts demonstrations.'

‘It sounds really interesting. I might just go.'

Harold looked up, pushed a wad of papers across the desk, thought for a moment and then took a deep breath. ‘The word “might” does not come into it, Gervase. You
will
be going.'

‘Pardon?'

‘You'll be attending the Fettlesham Show, along with the other inspectors.'

‘I will?'

‘You will. You have been assigned your own little job.'

‘I have?' I exclaimed.

‘Yes, indeed. Sidney will be adjudicating the Art Competition, David organizing the children's sports and you will be judging the Poetry Competition. Dr Gore, in his wisdom, has volunteered our services. Hard luck. For the last few years they have had some local poet, Philomena Phillpots or somebody or other, and very popular by all accounts. She writes about the countryside and the birds and animals. She's into trees and daffodils and little frisking lambs. Wordsworth
sort of thing. Anyway, this year she says she can't do it for some reason or another, so you have been dragooned into judging. I gather hundreds and hundreds of children submit their poems, just about now if I'm not mistaken, and it will be your job to select the best five to go forward to the final judging.'

‘I'm surely not expected to read hundreds and hundreds of children's poems, am I?' I exclaimed, horrified at the prospect.

‘But I thought you liked poetry, Gervase,' simpered Harold with a twinkle in his large eyes and a wry smile on his wide generous mouth. ‘You are forever quoting verse and going into raptures about the wonderful poems the children write.'

‘I do like poetry, but I just haven't the time to read hundreds of poems. Not in the next few weeks, anyway.'

‘Don't worry, Gervase,' Harold reassured me. ‘You judge the final shortlist of poems. The organizers do all the preliminary reading and come up with the best ten. The poems, if my memory serves me right, are always about rabbits caught in traps, sheep giving birth, faithful collie dogs, haymaking, the thrill of foxhunting, and cows – lots and lots of poems about cows, so you don't need to worry about the themes. You just turn up on the Saturday of the show, judge the poems, say a few words, smile pleasantly and present the book tokens and rosettes to the five prizewinners. It's a job with minimal duties and a very pleasant and uneventful day out, I should imagine. It is yours truly who has all the hassle and harassment, trouble and vexation in the Education Tent!'

The Saturday of the show was sunny and windless. Beneath the cloudless blue sky, large white marquees and coloured
tents were scattered across the wide open field. The showground was a hive of activity. People were preening dogs, grooming horses, brushing sheep and washing cattle. Others were arranging cakes and plates of biscuits on long trestle tables, or putting the final touches to amazing floral creations. In one corner of the field, potters, artists, farriers, saddlers, blacksmiths, cordwainers and a host of other craftspeople were showing how to weave baskets, mould clay figures, build dry-stone walls, shoe horses, make corn dollies and fashion leather. It was a mass of colour and activity.

‘I'll see you at the Refreshment Tent at two o'clock,' said Harold, ‘and I will treat you to lunch. You should be finished judging by then – it's pretty straightforward. Then, in the afternoon, you can join me in the Education Tent.'

POETRY COMPETITION THIS WAY
announced the large printed notice. Some wit had scrawled underneath, ‘So come on in and have a nice day!' Inside, the tent was crowded, stuffy and noisy. I peered in every direction until I spotted a dumpy, vigorous, red-faced woman with a bay window of a bust and a powerful stare. She wore thick spectacles and a flowerpot hat and sported a large badge with ‘steward' written in gold across it.

‘I'm the judge,' I said to her.

‘You're the what?' she snapped.

‘Gervase Phinn, the judge of the Poetry Competition.'

‘Oh, the adjudicator, 'bout time too. Given you up for lost. I've got Mrs Williams searching the showground for you. We were going to put you on the loudspeakers.'

‘I was told to report at ten o'clock –' I began.

‘Never mind, you're here now,' she retorted. ‘I'm Joan Pickersgill. The final ten poems have been selected. We've got some really, really lovely efforts this year so your task won't be easy. Now I've mounted the ones you have to
look at on the large boards around the edge of the marquee. You need to pick five out of the ten and then place them in reverse order.' I glanced at the boards. Some of the poems were handwritten in a thin spidery style, others printed in bold capitals. Some were word-processed and several were decorated with little coloured drawings and patterns.

‘Is this him?' barked a lean, middle-aged woman with dark, narrow eyes, as she pushed her way through the crowd. She was dressed in a dark green waxed jacket and thick tartan headscarf and carried a vicious-looking shooting-stick with a spike at the end.

‘He arrived just after you went looking for him, Myra,' replied Mrs Pickersgill.

‘Are you Mr Chinn?' yapped the lean woman.

‘Phinn,' I corrected.

‘What?' she snapped.

‘Phinn. My name is Phinn.'

‘Is it? I was told your name was Gerald Chinn. I thought you must be some Eastern poet. I was looking all over for a Chinaman.'

‘It's Gervase Phinn,' I said. ‘And I'm the County School Inspector for English and Drama, and I was told to report at ten o'clock –'

‘School inspector, are you? I thought you were a poet?'

‘I am a poet but my –'

‘Well, we are looking for the best poem not the best handwriting or spellings, you know.'

‘Yes, I appreciate that,' I replied.

‘I didn't know he was an inspector, did you, Joan?'

‘I didn't,' replied her companion. ‘I thought he was a poet.' She turned in my direction. ‘You won't frighten the children, will you?'

‘No,' I sighed, ‘I won't frighten the children.'

‘We usually have Philomena Phillpots, the Dales poetess,' said Mrs Pickersgill. ‘Wonderful, wonderful writer. Have you come across her?'

‘No, I can't say that I have.'

‘Well, she's very popular, very popular indeed, and has published poems, you know,' added Mrs Williams. ‘Proper published poems. You can't open a woman's magazine without seeing one of Philomena Phillpot's poems, can you, Myra? And she does the insides of birthday cards as well.'

‘Does she really?' I replied, wishing I was in the Education Tent with Harold. Anything was better than this.

‘She writes poems people can understand,' said the lean woman. ‘None of these airy-fairy poems without any rhyme nor reason. Lots of lovely descriptions.'

‘Really.' I was getting a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Things, I thought to myself, might not be quite as straightforward as I had anticipated.

‘Now, this is the way we do it, Mr Phinn,' said Mrs Pickersgill, referring to her clipboard. ‘It goes like clockwork if we stick to the proper agreed routine. Any deviation from the proper agreed routine, Mr Phinn,' she warned, staring through the thick lenses of her glasses, ‘will result in the sort of chaos we had a few years ago when some journalist or other presented the prizes. He
would
do things in his own way and as a result there was mayhem. I have an idea he had spent quite a time prior to the judging in the Beer Tent. I could certainly smell alcohol on his breath but that's beside the point.'

‘That was one of the reasons why we moved the judging from the afternoon to the morning,' added Myra. I continued to listen to the martinet barking out her orders of the day and explaining in great detail the programme of
events. The children would assemble at ten-thirty – all ten finalists – and stand next to their poems. I would then move from one to another, read the poem and have a little chat with the young poet (‘not too long or it will take all day'). Then I would say a few words to the children and parents about the high standard of entry and the lovely poems that I had read. Finally I would announce the winners in reverse order and present the rosettes and the book tokens. ‘Is that clear?' she snapped.

‘Crystal,' I replied bluntly.

‘Jolly good, then you can tootle off and browse around the poems, have a quick preliminary read and I will collect you when the judging is about to commence.'

The ten poems ranged from the exceptional to the pretty ordinary so I satisfied myself that this would be an easy task after all. I had already selected the five I considered to be the best; the final judging was merely a formality. Or so I thought. When the time came for me to do the circuit of the tent, Mrs Pickersgill's booming voice came through the loudspeakers.

‘Attention! Attention everybody! The poetry judging is about to commence!' The atmosphere changed. The noise subsided, there was a hushed silence and I could feel all eyes upon me. The first poem was of inferior quality and extended over three pages in the same rhyming doggerel. It started:

All over the land it began to snow,

Up on the hills and way down below,

Away from the town where the lights did glow,

Away from the wood where there lived a crow.

I did not like the crow, oh no,

But I liked playing in the snow.

‘You have obviously put a great deal of time and effort into this poem,' I told the tall, serious-looking girl who stood next to her composition. She peered at me, solemn and unsmiling and without answering. ‘And do you like writing poetry?' She continued to stare impassively.

‘She made up all the rhymes herself,' said a red-faced little woman with very dark button eyes. ‘Every one.' I smiled and moved on.

The next poem was clearly lifted from ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree'. It began:

I will arise and go now,

And go to Fettlesham,

And a small house I'll build there

Of stone and of cement.

And I will have a pond there

And a hive for the honey bees

And live alone in the Yorkshire Dales.

‘Did you write this poem yourself?' I asked a cheerful-looking youngster with a tangle of ginger curls and a freckled face.

‘Oh yes, mester,' he replied firmly. ‘Definitely wrote it myself.'

‘It's just that it reminds me of a poem I have read before – a poem by W. B. Yeats. Do you know it?'

‘Never heard of it,' replied the youngster smiling innocently.

‘It is very like a poem called “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”,' I persisted.

‘This Yeats must have got the idea from our Sam,' interposed an angry-looking man with a face the colour and texture of a walnut. I moved on.