03 Dear Teacher (30 page)

‘Maybe I do,’ said Sally. ‘You know, it’s strange. I’ve loved Weight Watchers and I’ve been sensible in what I have eaten, but my weight still seems to be the same.’

‘These things take time, Sally,’ said Sue as she immersed a pile of saucers.

‘And I’ve begun to feel hungry at odd times.’

Sue dropped the teaspoons into the hot soapy water. ‘What do you mean by odd times?’

Sally laughed. ‘It’s a good job my Colin is understanding. Two nights ago he made me mashed potatoes and beans at midnight and last night it was chocolate on toast.’

‘I think you should go for a check-up.’

‘Oh, I’ll be fine,’ said Sally.

Sue rinsed the bowl and dried her hands. Then she walked over to the staff-room door and closed it and turned to look at Sally more intently. ‘Sally,’ she said quietly, ‘have you considered anything else?’

Sally stopped wiping the draining board and looked up in surprise. ‘To be honest, I think I just feel a bit bloated. There could be lots of reasons.’ She hung the tea towel over the radiator, then picked up her ethnic, open-weave shoulder bag and hunted in it for her packet of tissues.

Sue closed the cupboard doors and put on her coat. ‘Look, Sally, why not call in tomorrow lunchtime to see Dr Davenport after his morning surgery?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Sally, blowing her nose.

‘It can’t do any harm,’ said Sue with a reassuring smile, ‘and you’re probably right. Maybe you’re a bit run-down, in which case a tonic will be just the thing.’ Then she buttoned her coat, picked up her bag and opened the door. As an afterthought, she walked back and squeezed Sally’s arm. ‘Ring me if you want to talk.’

A few minutes later, when Sally climbed into her car, she forgot to insert her cassette of the Carpenters into the cassette-player and drove off in silence.

Colin had prepared some bubble and squeak and a glass of white wine. Sally ate it quickly, picked up her wine and sipped it.

‘You’re quiet tonight,’ he said.

‘Busy day,’ said Sally, kicking off her sandals and putting her feet up on the sofa.

Colin squeezed next to her and put his arm round her shoulder.

‘You are a lovely man,’ said Sally dreamily.

Five minutes later she was asleep.

On Tuesday morning, outside the leaded kitchen window of Bilbo Cottage bluebottles buzzed, while the fluffy seeds of willow drifted on the heavy still air. High summer was almost upon us and, as I walked out to my car, sunshine glinted on the yellow and chrome AA badge attached to the grill. The hedgerow was a riot of new life and bracken was uncurling in among the cow parsley and the first magenta bells of foxgloves. As I drove to school, sycamore and ash keys hung lazily above my head as the trees, now in heavy leaf, shaded the back road from Kirkby Steepleton into Ragley.

When I arrived, Anne was showing Sally and Jo a smart programme with a dark-blue cover. On the front it read,

‘My friend said it was absolutely wonderful and she gave me this programme,’ said Anne. ‘So how about it?’

‘Count me in,’ said Sally.

‘I’ll come, but Dan’s working,’ said Jo.

‘How about you, Jack?’ said Anne. ‘We’re going to the Mystery Plays on Thursday night.’

‘Definitely,’ I said. ‘I’ve not been since I was a schoolboy.’

Every four years the York mystery plays were performed open-air in the city and attracted huge audiences. Born in the Middle Ages, these ‘mystery’ or ‘craft’ plays flourished throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the people of York had carried on the tradition.

‘I see Christopher Timothy, the actor from
All Creatures Great and Small
, is in it,’ said Sally, scanning the long list of actors.

‘They usually have somebody famous as the lead part,’ said Anne.

Sally looked at the back of the programme. ‘It says here that the De Gray Rooms in Exhibition Square will be open from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. throughout the festival and, if you have a meal, you get a concessionary ticket for 50p.
So
why don’t we all meet there?’ Everyone nodded in agreement. ‘What about John?’ asked Sally. ‘Do you think he might go?’

‘John’s not one for watching plays,’ said Anne sadly, ‘but he might be interested in the scenery.’

‘So are you organizing the tickets, Anne?’ I asked.

‘Yes. I’ll check with Vera this afternoon and book them tonight,’ said Anne. ‘I’ll ring Beth, shall I, Jack? I’m sure she’d love to go.’

‘Good idea,’ I said, but I missed the smiles exchanged between the three women.

At lunchtime, Sally asked if she could slip out of school to go to Dr Davenport’s surgery on the Morton Road. She explained she needed a pick-me-up and I asked her if she would get one for me as well. She seemed preoccupied and didn’t get the joke.

The rest of us relaxed over a cup of tea in the staff-room when Vera arrived following a busy morning at her cross-stitch class in the village hall. She immediately began to replenish the black ink in the drum of the Gestetner duplicating machine and we all watched in admiration. Vera was the only person who could achieve this task without getting her hands covered in ink.

‘I’m looking forward to the mystery plays,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid Joseph won’t be able to join us. He’s involved in an ecclesiastical conference in York all this week and he says he won’t be able to take his Religious Education lessons.’

I guessed Joseph was probably relieved.

I decided to do my Bible story during afternoon school and quickly understood Joseph’s frustrations when I came to mark the children’s exercise books. Eleven-year-old Frankie Kershaw had written ‘Moses went up Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Commandments but he died before he got to Canada’, while ten-year-old Cathy Cathcart informed me that ‘the group who followed Jesus was called the twelve decibels’. I knew that to be a good teacher of young children you had to understand their world. As I put a small red question mark in the margin, I reflected that you also needed a sense of humour.

After school, I stayed late in the office to begin my end-of-year reports for the children in my class until seven o’clock, when I decided to call into The Royal Oak for a quick meal on my way home. I hadn’t been shopping at the weekend and my kitchen cupboards were empty again.

At the bar, Sheila was in heated conversation with Stevie ‘Supersub’ Coleclough. ‘What you on about?’ shouted Sheila, pointing at the plate of food she had put on the bar. ‘That’s proper mince, that is, straight from Piercy’s Butcher’s in the ’Igh Street. There’s none finer.’

Stevie looked dubiously at the mince-and-onion pie, chips and peas, covered in delicious gravy. It made my mouth water.

‘It said in t’paper them scientists in London were mekking it from beans,’ said Stevie. He pointed to a
headline
in a
Yorkshire Post
that had been left on the bar.

‘Don’t be daft, Stevie. ’Ow can y’mek mince from beans?’ grumbled Sheila.

Stevie blushed scarlet, picked up his meal and wandered away to join the rest of the Ragley cricket team. Big Dave was the captain and was haranguing his followers about his latest concern. ‘Handbags for men … they’ll be wearing earrings next!’

Everyone agreed instantly and with equal contempt, except for Clint Ramsbottom, who stared into the haze of cigarette smoke and thoughtfully fingered his left ear.

‘Y’reight there, Dave,’ agreed Little Malcolm somewhat belatedly. Malcolm’s thoughts were elsewhere. He had his eye on a car. While the local council turned a blind eye to Big Dave and Little Malcolm using their bin wagon for personal business, Malcolm knew deep down in his heart that Dorothy Humpleby would be far from impressed if they turned up at their next dance in a three-ton refuse wagon. On Victor Pratt’s forecourt, Malcolm had seen a 1250 cc. bright-green, two-door Deluxe 1973 Hillman Avenger with a sticker in the windscreen marked £795. This was a fortune to Little Malcolm but he thought his big cousin might chip in.

‘An’ what can ah do f’you, Mr Sheffield?’ said Sheila. ‘Yer looking tired.’

‘Just a half of Chestnut and the same as Stevie, please, Sheila. It looked lovely.’

‘Ah like a man wi’ a good appetite,’ said Sheila. ‘Ah’ll
bring
it t’yer table.’ With a wiggle of her skin-tight leather miniskirt she disappeared into the kitchen.

I picked up the
Yorkshire Post
, found a quiet table away from the jukebox and began to read an article entitled ‘Snap, Crackle and Stop’. It said that fifty Yorkshire folk had been asked if they wanted morning television and most of them had said no. Currently during the early morning there was nothing on television except for the Open University on BBC1 and BBC2 up to 7.55 a.m. and, on ITV, programmes for schools and colleges began at 9.30 a.m. So the idea of breakfast television seemed strange.

Sheila arrived with my meal and leaned over my shoulder to look at the newspaper. ‘What y’readin’, Mr Sheffield?’ The smell of her scent was overpowering.

‘It’s about breakfast television, Sheila.’

‘How d’you mean, breakfast television?’

‘Well … it’s television at breakfast time.’

‘That’ll never catch on, Mr Sheffield,’ she said, ‘unless y’put on
Hawaii Five-O
when ah’m slippin’ out o’ me negligée.’

‘You’re probably right, Sheila,’ I said, quickly dispelling the image that had sprung into my mind.

I tucked into my meal and scanned the end of the article. ‘Ah’m too busy mekkin’ ’is breakfast,’ a certain Mrs Cynthia Clack of Thirkby was reported to have said. It was clear that breakfast television would have a hard time catching on in Yorkshire.

* * *

On Thursday at six o’clock I pulled up outside Beth’s house and she hurried down the path and jumped into my car.

‘Thanks for the lift, Jack,’ she said. ‘It was difficult getting out of school so quickly.’

Beth was wearing an elegant floral-print, calf-length dress with a neat braid trim on the collar and looked stunning. She carried a fleece on her lap in anticipation of the temperature dropping as the night wore on. I was aware of the heady scent of Rive Gauche perfume as we sped into York and, once again, I knew contentment.

It was a perfect summer evening, warm and still, and the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey were bathed in sunlight. After meeting in the De Gray Rooms for a hasty summer salad, Anne, with a slightly bemused John Grainger in tow, gathered us together and we walked into the Museum Gardens.

Sally had brought a bag of sixpences and used them all to buy everyone an ice-cream cornet with a flake in it. The ‘tanner’, worth two and a half pence, was about to go out of circulation and Sally had collected a jarful of the small silver coins over the years.

‘Isn’t this the most perfect setting?’ said Jo. We found our seats, enjoyed our ice creams and looked in admiration at the imposing stone walls and arched windows of the ruined abbey. Traditionally, it was against this dramatic setting that the mystery plays were performed.

‘It used to be a Benedictine monastery,’ said Sally, ‘but in 1270 it was almost totally destroyed by fire.’

‘Clever how they’ve built the scenery round it,’ said John, ‘and it’s well-built: just look at those dovetail joints.’

‘Pity Colin’s not here – you could have compared notes,’ said Sally with a grin.

I glanced at Beth. She had put her fleece over her shoulders. ‘Are you warm enough?’ I asked.

‘I’m fine, Jack,’ she said. ‘It’s good to be here.’

The summer sun was beginning to bleach her honey-blonde hair once again and, in the evening light, she looked beautiful.

To the accompaniment of the Rowntree Mackintosh band, the actors walked across the grass and the drama began. The plays were meant to represent the history of the world from God’s creation to the Last Judgement. We watched, spellbound, as God created heaven, earth and hell and then witnessed the angel Lucifer’s fall from grace. It was hard to believe that the ordinary artisans of the Middle Ages had the skill to create such wonderful plays along with beautiful stained-glass windows and the mighty cathedrals of England.

Eventually, all the audience were invited to sing ‘Jerusalem’ and, as the sun gradually sank behind the nearby St Olave’s Church, the peacocks, wandering free in the grounds, screeched in accompaniment.

It was a tired but happy group who said goodnight and Beth and I set off for my car in Marygate. Far from the footfalls of the evening city, we walked hand in hand with calm conviction through the Museum Gardens.

* * *

On Friday morning, as I drove towards the school gates, I saw Heathcliffe Earnshaw sitting on the village green. He had filled an old Tizer bottle full of water and dropped in a liquorice shoelace. Then he screwed on the cap and shook it until his teeth rattled. Finally, he stared hard at the grubby-looking liquid. It had definitely changed colour. Then, he wiped the snot from his upper lip, unscrewed the bottle and lifted it to his lips. Like a connoisseur of fine wines he swirled it round his mouth and then, unlike a connoisseur, he swallowed it. With a satisfied nod of appreciation he screwed on the cap. Perfect, he thought. For Heathcliffe, this was a typical start to a day.

I parked my car, hurried across the playground and bumped into Jimmy Poole. ‘Hello, Jimmy. What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘Ah’m thuckin’ a thweet, Mithter Theffield,’ replied Jimmy. ‘Ith a therbert lemon. Would you like one?’

I recalled my mother telling me never to refuse a present from a child. ‘Yes, please, Jimmy.’ I walked into the entrance hall, popped the sweet into my mouth and, in doing so, broke one of my own school rules.

Sally was using the phone in the school office. ‘I’m just ringing to check the results and whether or not I need a prescription,’ she said.

It sounded personal so I walked through to the staff-room.

‘ ’Morning, Jack,’ said Anne, adding two more labels
to
the collection box on the staff-room table. The Ragley scout group was saving Golly labels from Robertson’s jam and marmalade jars in order to provide camping equipment and we were all eating vast quantities to support the cause.