04 Village Teacher (32 page)

It was far from my mind. ‘Yes. So I’ll walk over to the Oak about seven and you come on when you can. We could have something to eat, if you like.’

‘Fine, Jack. See you later.’

I stared at the receiver and then slowly replaced it in its cradle.

There was a time when I thought Beth would share my home and, perhaps one day, the patter of tiny feet might echo on the quarry-tiled floor of the kitchen of Bilbo Cottage. I had felt comfortable with my niche in the cluster of little villages at the foot of the Hambleton Hills in the vast and beautiful North Yorkshire countryside. Now, life seemed to be growing so complicated.

The Royal Oak was already busy. Most of the wooden tables and chairs outside were fully occupied by locals on this perfect summer evening.

‘ ’Ello, Mr Sheffield,’ said Sheila. ‘No Miss ’Enderson tonight?’

‘She’s coming later, Sheila,’ I said in a distracted way.

‘Usual, is it, Mr Sheffield? ’Alf o’ Chestnut?’

‘Make it a pint, please, Sheila.’

Sheila pulled on the pump and fluttered her false eyelashes. ‘Ah like a man who knows what ’e wants. She’s a lucky woman, that fiancée o’ yours.’

I put thirty pence on the bar. Don appeared at her elbow and collected some empty glasses from the bar.

‘Thank you, Mr Sheffield, but let me tell y’summat f ’nowt.’ She leant over the bar and I averted my eyes from her colossal cleavage. ‘Married life’s not a bed o’ roses.’

Don had a big grin on his stubbly face. ‘Tek no notice,’ he said. ‘We’ve ’ad twenty ’appy years o’ married life.’ Then he ambled to the far end of the bar to serve two farmers.

Sheila looked after him and then winked at me. ‘Only thing is, Mr Sheffield, ’e’s ’ad nineteen and ah’ve ’ad one.’

When Beth sat down she immediately opened the
Times Educational Supplement
to the Primary Headships page. The advertisement for Gorse Manor was circled in red felt pen.

‘You need to get your skates on, Jack,’ she said. ‘The closing date is next week.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m still thinking about it.’

She sipped her gin and tonic and closed the paper. ‘But you
must
go for it. We
have
discussed it.’

‘Have we?’

‘Yes. Don’t you remember?’ she said, leaning over the table. ‘I told you about it.’

‘Yes, you did.’

Suddenly, there was a sense of urgency in her voice. ‘Jack, do you want to be a village teacher all your life?’

I put my head in my hands. ‘I’m not sure …’

‘If you get this, we could consider buying a bigger house somewhere between Scarborough and Hartingdale … And we ought to set a date for the wedding – say, next Easter.’

Beth seemed to have it all worked out.

I spent Saturday morning sitting at my garden table and filling in the application form. Another hot day was in store and, from far away, the bleating of sheep carried on the morning breeze. In the dense hedgerow of hazel and hawthorn, a blackbird’s yellow beak could be seen, while wrens and starlings were all busy searching for their breakfast. On my Yorkshire stone pathway, a thrush was busy cracking a snail’s shell with manic endeavour. Life lower down the food chain was clearly a hazardous business.

By lunchtime I had finished and I set off in my Morris Minor Traveller along the back road to Ragley village and then on towards Morton, where I parked outside Beth’s cottage. Hand in hand we walked to the vicarage, where the church fête was in full swing. A host of colourful visitors in their straw hats and bright dresses had turned up in force to enjoy the ice cream and lemonade stall, the home-made cakes, the bowling for a pig competition, plus a bran-tub lucky-dip and the beautiful-baby competition.

Around us the villagers of Ragley were busy swapping
stories
about Vera’s excellent scones, the strange but compulsive taste of Joseph’s home-made greengage wine and, of course, what Lady Diana’s wedding dress might look like. There was laughter and chatter, colour and vivacity, alongside peace and tranquillity.

‘Don’t you just love all this, Beth – this village, the community, the characters?’

‘You know I do, Jack, but I never imagined we would be here for ever.’

I stared at the scene around me. ‘I like the feeling of … belonging.’

We walked in dappled shadow under the high elms and alongside tall, ageing gravestones.

‘I know you do,’ said Beth, ‘but life moves on and you’d probably grow into this new headship.’

‘I wouldn’t have a class of my own.’

‘You’ll be able to teach lots of classes in a large school, if you wish.’

Ash-grey lichen had begun to encrust the gravestone beside me and, with my finger, I traced the carved letters. One day, they would disappear for ever and only the memory would remain. Time was irrepressible and, like the constant winds that circled the earth, it could turn our dreams to dust.

‘I love Ragley School, Beth, and I would be sad to leave it all.’

‘I know that, Jack, but …’

‘But what?’

‘Can’t you see? It’s
our
future as well.’

The gentle breeze blew a strand of honey-blonde hair across her face and I lifted it gently and tucked it behind
her
ear. She smiled at the gesture but her green eyes stared up at me with curiosity.

‘I know,’ I said quietly and we walked back together into the crowds.

Joyce Davenport beckoned to us. She was carrying a tray of scones filled with strawberry jam and fresh whipped cream. ‘Mr Sheffield, Miss Henderson, perhaps you would like to join us for one of Vera’s delicious scones and a cup of tea?’

We followed her to a nearby table and were soon deep in conversation with Valerie Flint and a group of ladies in the church choir about home baking.

‘I wonder if we’ll ever discover the secret art of Vera’s scones,’ said Joyce.

‘There are secrets women take to their graves,’ said Valerie Flint mysteriously.

The conversation ebbed and flowed and, occasionally, Beth glanced up at me, but I knew there was a lot left unsaid between us.

Later we walked into the marquee to see the results of the children’s art competition, judged by Miss Tripps, the retiring headteacher of Morton School. Hazel Smith had won a Highly Commended certificate for a painting of Ruby winning the ladies egg-and-spoon race at a long-ago sports day.

Ruby was thrilled and was standing with Hazel outside the tent. She was also carrying a jar of humbugs with a winning tombola ticket attached.

‘ ’Umbug, Mr Sheffield, Miss ’Enderson?’ said Ruby. ‘Ah’ve jus’ won ’em.’ She nodded towards the high walls
of
the vicarage garden, where Vera was talking to the major. ‘Nice t’see Miss Evans looking ’appy, Mr Sheffield,’ she said. ‘Ah once thought she were a bit hoity-toity, if y’tek m’meaning, but she’s got ’eart o’ gold.’

‘I agree, Ruby,’ I said.

Vera was standing with the major by a rickety gate that led to her secret garden. It was a time of plenty, none more so than in Vera’s kitchen garden enclosed by tall red-brick walls. There, an abundance of potatoes, carrots, peas on twiggy sticks, lettuces, spring onions and tall runner beans waited to be harvested. George Hardisty, the retired school gardener, had recently become the vicarage gardener and he had surrounded the precious crops with wire netting to protect them from hungry rabbits.

‘Oh, Rupert, how perfect. I simply love freesias,’ said Vera. ‘The scent is so wonderful.’

‘Flowers for a lady,’ said Rupert with a courteous bow.

‘You are such a good friend,’ she said.

Rupert bent and kissed her hand. One day he hoped to be more than just a friend, but for now that was his secret. Beth and I walked on, feeling we were intruding.

Meanwhile, at the ice-cream stall, Geoffrey Dudley-Palmer was standing with Elisabeth Amelia and Victoria Alice. The two beautifully dressed and coiffured little girls caught my eye and waved at me in delight.

Nearby, sitting alone at a picnic table, Petula Dudley-Palmer took out a small black-and-white photograph from a secret pocket in the lining of her handbag and
recalled
the days of her youth in a little council house in Withenshaw, on the outskirts of Manchester. The highlight of her life had been the Manchester Majorettes and the regular competitions had given her a colourful and exciting escape from her drab life. She looked with affection at the photograph of the youthful, pencil-slim Petula in her majorette costume. In a pair of white ankle socks, her legs looked skinny below a short skirt that had been lovingly decorated with pink pompons by her mother. Her ambition then was to be like the senior girls who wore distinctive waistcoats emblazoned with metal badges proclaiming their success as majorettes. As she scanned the youthful faces of her friends of long ago she wondered what had become of them. There was no doubt she had been fortunate in finding Geoffrey, the young business executive with the world at his feet, and she hurriedly replaced the photograph and smiled as he returned with her ice cream.

‘ ’Ello, Mr Sheffield,’ shouted a cheerful voice. ‘Ah’m gonna ’ave a candy-floss.’ It was Darrell Topper with his mother and another elderly lady I had never seen before.

‘Hello, Darrell,’ I said.

‘Ah don’t think there is no candy-floss,’ retorted the elderly lady.

‘Yes, there is, Grandma. Look at t’sign. It says “Candy-floss for sale”.’

I smiled. A year ago Darrell wouldn’t have been able to read it.

As we walked on, Darrell’s grandmother said, ‘And who was that big feller wi’ t’funny glasses?’

‘ ’E’s ’eadteacher, Mam,’ said Mrs Topper. ‘ ’E taught our Darrell t’read.’

Beth turned back and looked at them thoughtfully and then squeezed my hand.

It was late when Beth and I arrived back at her cottage. She unlocked the door and turned to face me. It had been a lovely summer’s day and now a vast purple sky spread to the far horizon over the plain of York. I held her in my arms, not wanting to let her go.

‘What is it?’ Beth asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s fine, Beth. It’s just me thinking about the future.’

Was it a backward step to say I was happy to be a village schoolteacher? Would Beth think me a man with no drive? My mother had once told me there were three types of people: those who simply take and then leave society all the poorer for it; those who tread water and leave society as they found it; and, finally, those who use their gifts to make society better. Ragley was such a place and I knew that with hard work I could make a difference in this little corner of Yorkshire I called my home.

‘Jack, is everything … you know, all right?’

‘Life just seems a little
uncertain
at present,’ I said.

‘I suppose the only certainty is uncertainty,’ she said.

I stared into her green eyes as if seeing her for the first time. Perhaps happiness is always fragile and we have to take it while we can, before it breaks. ‘Beth, sometimes I think I will never know you … But I will always love you.’

‘Jack …’

‘Yes?’

She stretched up and kissed me tenderly. ‘Stay tonight,’ and she took my hand and we stepped into the darkness of her silent hallway.

Chapter Twenty

Village Teacher

School closed today for the summer holidays with 88 children on roll. It was confirmed that Mrs Pringle will return to her post as full-time teacher of Class 3 in the autumn term and a presentation was made to Miss Flint in appreciation of her services. We were informed that County Hall will notify all schools in the area ‘very soon’ regarding proposed closures
.

Extract from the Ragley School Logbook:
Friday, 24 July 1981

AS I DROVE
up the High Street, the village was coming alive. Diane Wigglesworth was putting a huge poster of Lady Diana in the window of her Hair Salon and Timothy Pratt was admiring his horizontal bunting. On the village green, Clint and Shane Ramsbottom were unpacking the Ragley scouts marquee from the back of a trailer and Major Rupert Forbes-Kitchener was holding a large flag
of
St George and supervising the erection of the village flagpole.

It was Friday, 24 July, the last day of the school year, and the villagers of Ragley were beginning their preparations for next week’s national holiday. The royal wedding was drawing near – and so was my interview at County Hall.

I pulled into the school car park and sat there for a few moments, deep in my own thoughts. I took out the letter from my inside pocket and read it again.

Dear Mr Sheffield
,

You are invited to attend for interview at County Hall, Northallerton, at 10.00 a.m. on Thursday, 30 July 1981 for the post of Headteacher of Gorse Manor Primary School, Scarborough, to commence January 1982
…

Then I stared up at the bell tower and wondered for how much longer it would ring out to announce the beginning of another school day.

The last day of the school year is always one of mixed emotions. The summer holidays stretched out before us but for the eleven-year-olds in my class it was time to say goodbye to Ragley School. The local comprehensive awaited them along with adolescence, a collar-and-tie uniform, blazers that they would grow into, teachers for every subject, a rigid timetable and, on a far-distant horizon, public examinations.

By ten o’clock, our school hall was full for the final ‘Leavers’ Assembly’. Predictably, it was a tearful one,
particularly
for the parents whose children were called out one by one to receive the gift of a book donated by the PTA. Saying goodbye to these children was hard enough but knowing that the school might close as well was almost heartbreaking.

The Revd Joseph Evans, as chair of governors, spoke of these ‘uncertain times’ in his final summary of the school year and there was silence when he said that our fate would soon be known. He thanked the teachers for all their hard work and, particularly, Valerie Flint, for taking over from Sally Pringle in Class 3.

Anne and Vera looked close to tears when Katy Ollerenshaw closed our last assembly of the academic year with our traditional school prayer: