The Other Side of the Dale (8 page)

‘Really?' replied Sidney.

‘What are they doing here anyway?' she asked bluntly.

‘The teachers, the fleas or the animals?'

‘The stuffed animals.'

‘Those, Connie,' he replied gently, ‘those wonderful, carefully preserved creatures will form the focus for today's
course on Wildlife Drawing for Non-specialist Secondary School Art Teachers.'

‘Well, they don't look very wild to me,' she fired back. ‘They're dead.'

‘I know they are dead, Connie, they are stuffed, but they are the best alternative to the real thing and I don't want them interfered with.'

‘Huh!' Connie threw back her head and screwed up her face. ‘There'll be no interference, I can assure you of that. I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. They give me the creeps.'

‘Well that's fine,' replied Sidney. ‘If you stay away from them, they will stay away from you.'

‘How long are they going to be here?'

‘They'll be collected tomorrow morning by the Museum Service. Oh, and Connie,' he continued pointedly, ‘I do hope that you will resist the temptation to consign anything we create today to the dustbin.'

‘Pardon?'

‘Leave everything alone.'

Sidney spent the next half hour arranging the various creatures in the rather overgrown area to the rear of the Centre. The snarling fox glared menacingly through the bushes, the black raven perched on the stone wall, the two hedgehogs could be seen snuffling in the dry leaves underneath the dark trees, the fat badger stared around a tussock of tall grass and the heron peered into the murky waters of the pond as if looking for fish. Connie observed from the window.

Following a practical morning during which Sidney, in particularly enthusiastic mood, taught the teachers some of the skills of pencil and chalk sketching, the teachers moved
outside with their sketchpads to draw the animals ‘in their natural habitat'. Looking over the shoulders of some of the industrious teachers, Connie had to admit that the results were very impressive and much to be preferred to the ‘dustbin dragon' as she called it.

At four o'clock, the sketches were displayed to good effect on the Centre's walls, the stuffed animals and birds were gathered together in the entrance ready for collection the next morning, the teachers departed and Sidney left for a meeting at the Education Office.

‘I must say,' admitted Connie as we both admired the sketches and drawings, ‘they are more my cup of tea than great big dragons made of litter and junk. Mind you, I don't like having those stuffed animals all over the place. I shall be glad to see the back of them. They make me feel very uncomfortable.'

As we headed down the corridor, Connie suddenly peered out of the window. ‘What are
they
up to?' she asked.

Staring over the low, limestone wall which bordered the Centre were a couple of ageing ramblers. One clambered stiffly onto the wall and his companion handed up a camera.

‘What
are
they doing?' she asked me.

‘I've no idea,' I replied. ‘They seem to be interested in something or other at the back of the Centre.' We watched the group for a minute or so.

‘He's taking photographs of something. He needs to be careful balancing on that wall at his age. He could do himself a mischief.' Connie opened a window and shouted, ‘Hullo! Can I help you?'

The old gentleman with the camera was startled by her voice, tottered on the wall, regained his balance and then hissed back at Connie. ‘Ssssssshhhhhh!'

‘This is private property!' she called.

Again came the response. ‘Ssssssshhhhhh!' accompanied by gesticulations and waving of hands.

‘I'm going out to see what they want,' she said authoritatively and out of the Centre she strode and up to the wall. ‘Did you not hear me, this is private property! Get down from there at once.'

‘Quiet,' urged the fellow standing on the wall. He was a very tall, elderly, straight-backed man in long shorts, baggy anorak and heavy walking boots. ‘You'll frighten him away.'

‘Frighten who away?' demanded Connie in a loud voice.

‘Do keep quiet,' urged the man, pointing in the direction of the pond. ‘See – one of the most elegant, beautiful birds, indigenous to this country, very rarely seen at such close quarters.' Connie turned to see a heron – the stuffed heron – poised over the little pool. It had been forgotten by Sidney and remained rigid but very lifelike.

‘Oh that,' said Connie and, leaving the couple with open mouths, approached the heron, picked it up by its long neck and returned to the Centre. She turned in the direction of the two silent, awestruck ramblers when she got to the door. ‘It's stuffed!' she shouted. The effect of her words, which may of course have been misheard, was immediate and Connie and I watched with amusement as the old man clambered off the wall and set off up the path and disappeared from sight.

The following day Sidney arrived to make certain the stuffed birds and animals had been collected. Then, under the watchful eye of Connie, he began to take down from the display boards the various sketches and paintings.

‘I must say, Mr Clamp,' she remarked as she hovered behind him with a tin for the used staples, ‘this sort of art is much more to my liking. I mean, I'd have one of these pictures on my walls. It's proper art, isn't it?'

‘I am so very glad you approve, Connie,' replied Sidney. ‘Do allow me to present you with a little painting I did.' At this he gave Connie a small, carefully-drawn picture of a tiny furry creature watching with piercing eyes from beneath a fallen branch. ‘I think it is just the thing for you.'

‘Oh, well, that's very nice,' said Connie, quite taken aback. She peered at the picture of the small creature for a moment. ‘Yes, I like this. Thank you very much, Mr Clamp, I shall treasure it.' She continued to stare at the drawing for some time before remarking, ‘A little harvest mouse – it's really sweet.'

I did not enlighten Connie – it was the picture of a shrew.

Amongst the pile of mail one morning was a lovely letter from a Miss Christine Bentley, the Headteacher of Winnery Nook Nursery and Infant School. She expressed the hope that I might call in and visit her soon and included some delightful little poems written by the children. I looked at the map on the office wall and saw that my route to St Bartholomew's, an infant school I was to visit later that day, passed the village of Winnery Nook so I decided to pop in during the morning and thank Miss Bentley for her letter and the children for their poems.

‘Julie,' I said on my way out, ‘could you add another school onto my programme for the day? I'm going to call in at Winnery Nook Nursery and Infant School on my way to Crompton. Could you please give the Headteacher, Miss Bentley, a ring and tell her I am on my way?'

‘My goodness,' Julie replied, ‘what keenness. Not even time for coffee.'

Winnery Nook School was a relatively modern building in honey-coloured brick with an orange pantile roof and large picture windows. The school was surrounded by fields and rocky outcrops and backed by a friendly belt of larch and spruce trees which climbed towards the high moors. Everything about it looked clean and well tended. I arrived just before morning playtime to hear the squealing and laughing of small children as they ran and played in the small schoolyard.

I was just about to enter the main door when a very distressed looking little girl of about five or six, her face wet with weeping and her cheeks smeared where little hands had tried to wipe away the tears, tugged at my jacket.

‘They've all got big sticks!' she wailed piteously.

‘Who's got big sticks?' I asked, surprised.

‘All on 'em. They've all got big sticks!'

‘Well, they shouldn't have big sticks,' I replied.

‘I want a big stick!' she cried, sniffing and sobbing, her little body shaking in anguish.

‘No, you can't have a big stick. It's very dangerous.'

‘I want a big stick!' she cried. ‘I want a big stick!'

‘You could hurt somebody with a big stick,' I said.

‘But they've all got big sticks!' she howled again. ‘They've all got 'em.'

At this point a very attractive young woman appeared from the direction of the playground.

‘Whatever is it, Maxine?' she asked gently pulling the little body towards her like a hen might comfort a chick. She then looked at me. ‘It's Mr Phinn, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' I replied.

‘I'm relieved about that. We have to be so careful these days. The playground supervisor came rushing into the school saying there was a strange man talking to the children.'

I suddenly felt acutely embarrassed.

‘Of course, I'm so sorry. I should have come directly to the school office. It's just that this little girl was so distressed and came running up to me.' The child in question was nuzzling up to the teacher, sniffling and snuffling softly. ‘I'm looking for Miss Bentley, the Headteacher.'

‘That's me,' she replied, giving me such a smile that I was quite lost for words. She had the deepest of blue eyes
and the fairest complexion I had ever seen and a soft mass of golden hair. She was one of the most strikingly beautiful women I had ever seen.

‘Mr Phinn?' she said. ‘Mr Phinn?'

I returned from my reverie. ‘Oh, yes, I'm sorry. I was distracted. I do hope you don't mind my taking you up on your offer to call, Miss Bentley. I really did enjoy reading the children's poems and stories and would love to er … love to er …' I was lost in the deep blue eyes again.

‘Look around the school?' she asked.

‘Exactly, yes. I would love to look around the school if that's convenient.'

Before she could reply, the small child clutching her began to moan and groan again pitifully. ‘I want a big stick, Miss Bentley,' she moaned. ‘They've all got big sticks.'

‘Of course, you can have one,' the teacher replied, wiping away the little girl's tears. ‘You weren't there when I gave everybody one. You don't think I'd leave you out, Maxine, do you? You come with me and I'll get you one, a nice big one. How about that? I won't be a moment, Mr Phinn.'

‘A big stick?' I murmured. ‘You're giving this little girl a big stick?'

The teacher gave a great grin before replying, ‘She means a biscuit.'

The school was a delight: cheerful, optimistic and welcoming and the creative writing of very high quality. Maxine looked a very different little girl when I saw her again, smiling and contented and busily colouring away with a large blue crayon.

‘I've got a red crayon,' she said as I looked at her bright picture.

‘It's a blue crayon. You've got a blue crayon,' I replied.

‘It's red.'

‘No, it's blue.' I took the crayon from her little fingers and held it against my suit. ‘Like my suit, see – blue.'

‘That's
a blue crayon,' she said with great determination. ‘I know that. I'm talking about my red one. It's at home. I've got a red crayon at home.'

I sighed, smiled and nodded. ‘I see. And what is your picture about?'

‘A king and queen who live in a palace. Do you know how to write “queen”?'

‘Yes,' I said and, borrowing her pencil again, carefully wrote the letters. ‘It's a very difficult word this one. Can you see it begins with a “q” and a “u” and when you put these two letters together they sound like “kwu”.' She nodded, copied down the word carefully and added, ‘I know another word that starts with a “kwu”.'

‘Do you?'

‘It's Kwistmas twee,' she replied giggling.

‘This little girl,' I thought to myself, ‘really does take the biscuit.'

Miss Bentley approached and looked at the little girl's work. ‘That really is a lovely picture, Maxine,' she said gently.

As I looked at the teacher leaning over the small child, both of them smiling, I thought the phrase particularly apt: ‘That really is a lovely picture.'

‘Miss Bentley,' the small child asked suddenly in a very audible whisper, ‘Miss Bentley, is that man your boyfriend?'

‘No, Maxine,' she replied, colouring a little, ‘Mr Phinn's an inspector.'

‘He could still be your boyfriend,' she replied with all the openness and honesty of a small child.

At the end of the morning, I sat with the Headteacher in her office, sipping tea from a china cup and listening to
her tell me about the school and the children and the good work they produced.

‘I do hope you come to love this part of the world, Mr Phinn,' she said, ‘and get to know the very special children who live here.'

‘I'm sure I will,' I replied. I knew in my heart as I said it that I would. And I thought to myself, I wouldn't mind getting to know you as well.

‘Oh, how remiss of me,' said Miss Bentley with a twinkle in those large blue eyes as she passed me a plate of shortcake, ‘Do have a big stick!'

St Bartholomew's Roman Catholic Infant School was quite a contrast to Winnery Nook. Sister Brendan, the Headteacher, saw my car pull up outside her office window and was at the door of the school to greet me before I had a chance to straighten my tie and comb my hair. She beamed so widely that, had she worn lipstick, I would have expected to see traces on her ears. The small school was sited in the disadvantaged centre of Crompton, a dark and brooding northern industrial town. Tall black chimneys, great, square, featureless warehouses, and row on row of mean terraces stretched into the valley beyond. The school was adjacent to a grim and forbidding wasteland of derelict buildings and piles of rubble, surrounded by half-demolished houses which seemed to grow upwards like great red jagged teeth from blackened gums. From the grime and dust I walked into an oasis: a calm, bright, welcoming and orderly building.

‘Good afternoon to you, Mr Phinn,' said Sister Brendan enthusiastically. ‘I got your letter. We are all ready and waiting and raring to go.' She was a slight, thin-cheeked woman with tiny, dark, darting eyes and a sharp little beak
of a nose. Sister Brendan looked like a small hungry blackbird out for the early worm.

‘Good afternoon, Sister,' I replied, shaking a small cold hand.

‘And did you have a pleasant journey, Mr Phinn?' she asked, her little black glittering eyes looking up into mine.

‘Yes, indeed, Sister, a very pleasant journey.'

The Headteacher took me on a tour of the school, fluttering along the corridors, pointing and chattering and chuckling away as we went from room to room. Children's painting and poems, posters, pictures and book jackets covered every available space. Shelves held attractive books, tables were covered in shells, models, photographs and little artifacts. Each child we passed said ‘Hello,' brightly and in all the classrooms little busy bodies were reading, writing, discussing, solving problems and working at the computers.

‘It's a hive of activity,' I remarked.

‘Does that make me the Queen Bee?' asked Sister Brendan with a mischievous glint in her shining eyes.

It was clear that for Sister Brendan the children in her care were a source of real delight. She glided through the school, pointing out with pride a painting or a poem displayed on a corridor wall, telling me about the football team and the drama group and the brass ensemble, introducing me on the tour to each teacher with a flourish.

‘And here, Mr Phinn, is the wonderful Mrs Webb.'

‘Oh, Sister, really,' simpered the small, red-faced teacher, clearly enjoying the praise.

I explained to Sister Brendan the reason for my visit: to hear a selection of children read, test their spellings and look at their writing. The small head nodded like some mechanical toy.

‘No child leaves this school unable to read,' she boasted. ‘It is the single most important skill and we work extremely hard to achieve success for every child. Most of these children have few books in their homes and many of their parents do not have the inclination nor the time to hear them read so our task is a hard one. To fail to teach a child to read, Mr Phinn, in my book, is tantamount to handicapping that child for the rest of his life. I hope you will conclude, when you have done your testing and heard the children read, that we have risen to the challenge.'

I tested a sample of twenty children in the small and attractive school library. They came one after the other, clasping their readers, bright eyed and keen. All read with clarity and expression and when they spoke it was with enthusiasm and confidence. And I had never met such lively enquiring minds nor so many budding little philosophers in ones so young.

Marie, a seven-year-old with a round saucer face and enormous ginger bunches of hair, read a story about the great fierce lion in the zoo. She paused in her reading for a moment and a meditative expression came to her round face.

‘What are you thinking?' I asked quietly.

She thought for a moment, then sighed wistfully. ‘Oh, I was just thinking what the old lion was doing before they went and put him behind bars.'

‘He does look a fierce old lion, doesn't he?' I remarked.

‘I think I'd be very angry locked up in a cage all day and remembering the jungle.' She went on to explain to me how badly she felt humans treated animals. ‘My grandpa goes ferreting, you know. He goes with a dog and a ferret and catches rabbits. I told him I think it's cruel but he says it's not and the rabbit doesn't feel anything. I told him he
wouldn't like being chased down a burrow by a ferret.'

‘No,' I agreed, ‘I don't suppose he would.'

John was seven and read from a book about dinosaurs. He could pronounce many of the great monsters' names and concluded his very competent reading with a small lecture on the different kinds of prehistoric creatures.

‘Of course,' he remarked, ‘they are not really called dinosaurs, you know.'

‘Are they not?' I replied.

‘Prehistoric lizards is the correct name for them. Did you not know?'

I did not and told him so. Later in the day I asked Rebecca, the youngest in Mrs Webb's class of seven-year-olds, to read to me. She did so in beautifully modulated tones with great confidence and animation.

‘That was splendid,' I told her as she gently closed the book. ‘And do you like reading, Rebecca?'

‘Oh yes! Do you?'

‘Yes, I love books.'

‘What sort?'

‘Oh, books about everything and everybody,' I replied.

‘Do you have a lot of books at home?'

‘Yes, too many.'

‘I don't think you can have too many books,' she replied.

Rebecca next completed the standardized reading test, again without any trace of nervousness or apprehension.

‘That was splendid,' I told her a second time. ‘You got full marks!'

‘Have you another one?' she asked. ‘I like doing the tests.'