The Other Side of the Dale Page 5

  ‘What happens to it when it’s been treated?’

  ‘How much sewage is there?’

  Harold had the enviable ability of seeming to know a great deal about almost any subject, display an amazing knowledge and carry the listener with him. The teacher arrived to find the children in an excited semi-circle around Harold.

  ‘Miss! Miss!’ exclaimed one of the children. ‘It’s fantastic, Miss!’ He pointed to Harold. ‘The man who runs the sewage works has been telling us all about it!’

  Despite his somewhat frightening appearance, Harold was one of the gentlest, most modest and unassuming people it had been my pleasure to meet. During that second intriguing week I watched a real master at work: sensitive, intelligent, good-humoured, one who delighted in the company of children. Even the shyest, most nervous child soon felt confident and easy in his presence.

  The final visit that day was to an infant school just outside Fettlesham. Harold said very little in the classrooms but watched somewhat bemused as I hurried from desk to desk – interrogating, commenting, examining, writing, inspecting all I saw. Leaving the school he said to me, ‘You know, Gervase, you really enjoy the company of children, I can see that, and they obviously like you but – and I hope you won’t mind my saying this – you don’t listen to them enough. Give them a bit of breathing space.’ He was right. I think, along with many adults, I could be a better listener when it comes to children and have tried hard over the years to follow that early advice.

  Harold himself was a wonderful listener. He had a sensitive ear that encouraged even the most reticent child to open up and confide in him. He once related the story about how, when he had started as a school inspector in the early 1960s, he had visited a large infant school in the heart of an inner city. It had been a rather shabby, redbrick building with little displayed on the walls and a strong, musty smell pervading the atmosphere.

  ‘Most of the children come here from very deprived homes,’ the severe-looking Headteacher had explained to him. ‘Their parents never really talk to them about life. I’m afraid we have to start from scratch, Dr Yeats. Most of the children arrive with a very limited command of the English language.’

  Harold had then joined a class of seven-year-olds. In a corner of the classroom there had been a grubby but bright-eyed little boy splashing paint onto a large piece of sugar paper.

  ‘Hullo, what are you doing?’ Harold had asked.

  ‘Paintin’!’ had come the blunt reply.

  ‘It looks very good.’

  ‘We dunt paint much,’ the child had said. ‘Only we are today. We’ve got an important visitor coming.’ There had been no thought in the boy’s mind that the important visitor might be the gentle giant sitting next to him.

  ‘And what are you painting?’ Harold had asked.

  ‘It’s a jungle,’ had come the reply. ‘Prehistoric.’

  ‘What’s that creature?’

  ‘Brontosaurus.’

  ‘And that?’

  ‘Triceratops. They ’ad three ’orns on their ’eads, tha’ knows. Did tha’ know that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This one’s a pterodactyl and over ’ere’s a pteranadon. A lot of people don’t know t’difference, tha’ knows. Do you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, a lot of people don’t.’

  ‘What’s this one?’ Harold had asked pointing to a round, fat, smiling creature.

  ‘Stegosaurus. They had three brains, tha’ knows.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘One in their ’ead, one in their tail and one in their bum. It din’t do ’em any good though.’ The boy had pointed to a vicious looking monster with spikes along its back and great sharp teeth like tank traps. ‘He ate ’em all – tyrannosaurus rex. He were reyt nasty, he was.’

  ‘You know a lot about these creatures,’ Harold had said.

  ‘I know.’ The little boy had put down his brush. ‘I luv ’em. They’re great. I draw ’em all t’time.’

  ‘And are there any around today?’

  ‘Course not! They’re all dead. They’re hextinct.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Dead. Wiped aaht.’

  ‘And why do you think that is?’ the Inspector had asked.

  The little boy had thought for a moment. ‘Well, mister,’ he had said, ‘that’s one of life’s gret mysteries, in’t it?’

  On the Friday Harold and I compared notes. ‘And do you think you will like this line of work, Gervase?’ he asked, staring at me with those large pale eyes.

  ‘I’m sure I will,’ I answered. ‘I feel a lot more optimistic and confident than I did last week. Thank you for looking after me. It’s been so useful and quite fascinating.’

  ‘It’s been a pleasure. Well, it’s getting late. We must be away. But if there is anything, anything at all I can be of help with, do please ask. Next week you are on your own. You’ve contacted all the schools we discussed, informing them of your intended visits, have you?’

  ‘Yes. I’m very much looking forward to getting out and about.’

  ‘We’ll meet each Friday for the next few weeks, at about this time, to see how things are going. All right?’ I nodded. ‘And don’t be afraid of asking for advice. Goodnight, Gervase. I think you’ll fit in really well.’

  ‘Goodnight, Harold, and thank you again,’ I replied. I watched the great frame disappear through the door and heard the heavy footfalls as he descended the narrow stairs. I was tired but happy and knew in my heart that this was the job for me. I smiled, thinking of the little boy with the bright eyes and grubby face who Harold had described, and what he had said: ‘Well, mister, that’s one of life’s gret mysteries, in’t it?’

  I was startled out of my reverie by the shrill ringing of the telephone.

  ‘Hello?’ I said cheerily.

  ‘Is that free school meals?’

  ‘I do not believe it!’ I said in a hushed voice. ‘I just do not believe it!’

  ‘Listen to me, I want free school meals for my daughter, Kimberley Jenkinson. Are you still there? Hello!’

  ‘Harold!’ I shouted. ‘Harold!’

  5

  The small, square schoolhouse was enclosed by low, craggy, almost white limestone walls. Beyond lay an expanse of pale and dark greens, cropped close by lazy-looking sheep. Further off the cold, grey fells, thick bracken slopes and long belts of dark woodland stretched to distant heights capped in a blue mist. The colouring of the scene was unforgettable on such a day. I had driven to the school early, along twisting narrow roads, and through the open car window I could feel the warmth of the September sun and catch the tang of leaf and loam and wood smoke. I had passed ancient trees, tranquil rivers, towering fells, great shaggy hills, stark grey outcrops, seas of dusky heather and even the shell of a gaunt castle, and had been filled with a huge sense of awe.

  It was Tuesday morning, the third week into my new job and my first visit to Hawksrill School, a tiny primary school deep in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales. Now, after many years as County Inspector and after countless visits to hundreds of schools just like Hawksrill, I still feel the magic and wonder of the Dales that I felt in those very first few weeks.

  I stood at the gate to the small school, breathing in the cold, clear morning air and taking in the panorama around me when a small, wide-eyed little girl of about ten with round cheeks and closely-cropped red hair, legs like pestles and a coat slightly too large, joined me. She had that wonderfully fresh rosy complexion of a daughter of the Dales.

  ‘It’s a grand day, mester, in’t it?’

  ‘It certainly is,’ I replied.

  ‘Them’s our yows,’ she said proudly, pointing to the sheep on the expanse of green below us. ‘Cross-breed Leicesters. Reight hardy breed, them. We’ve ’ad a good year. They weather up on t’wolds better than other breeds, tha’ knaws.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Grandad Braithwaite won t’blue ribbon at t’Fettlesham Show wi’ one of them
tups. He ’ad a fair good head on him, a reight good straight back, four solid legs, one at each corner, and were near on twenty stone.’

  ‘Really?’

  I must have sounded astonished because she expanded further. ‘Sheep I’m talkin’ abaat, not me Grandad Braithwaite!’

  I laughed and shook my head. The little girl looked at me for a moment and then tapped me gently on the arm. ‘Are tha’ comin’ in then, mester, or are tha’ stoppin’ out theer all day admirin’ view?’

  I followed my little companion into a long room, bright and warm and full of colour, and introduced myself to Mrs Beighton, Headteacher of the school, and to Mrs Brown, her assistant. They were uncannily alike: broad and sturdy and ruddy complexioned with short steely-grey hair and wide, friendly faces. They were both dressed in brightly coloured floral dresses and cardigans and wore beads and matching earrings. As I discovered when I had spent a few years in the county, Mrs Beighton and Mrs Brown were the archetypal Yorkshire women: plain speaking, unflappable, hard working, generous to a fault and with a wry sense of humour. They both greeted me with warm smiles.

  ‘Mr Phinn, I presume,’ said the Headteacher. ‘How very nice to meet you.’

  ‘How very nice to meet you,’ echoed Mrs Brown, ‘and so early, too.’

  ‘He is early, isn’t he, Mrs Brown?’

  ‘He is, Mrs Beighton.’

  I explained that I wished to spend the first part of the morning with the juniors and the remainder with the infants, listening to the children read, looking through their exercise books and asking them a few questions about their work. I would also test them on their number work and spellings before I left.

  ‘A pleasure,’ replied the Headteacher.

  ‘A pleasure,’ echoed her assistant. ‘We always enjoy having visitors here.’

  ‘We do, don’t we, Mrs Brown?’

  ‘We do, indeed, Mrs Beighton.’

  Mrs Brown and I went into the juniors’ classroom, and soon the children started to arrive. They came in chattering excitedly, their keen, happy faces a pleasure to behold. They hung up their coats, changed into their indoor shoes, exchanged reading books and sat talking to each other quietly until Mrs Brown called for their attention. Then all eyes were on their teacher. The register was taken and the school day began.

  There were sixteen bright-eyed children ranging between seven and eleven who listened attentively to Mrs Brown as she explained the first task of the day which was concerned with some number work. I sat in the small reading corner and, in the course of the first hour, heard one child after another read to me, first from their own reading book and then from some I had brought. I asked the younger pupils to read to me from The Tales of Peter Rabbit, the children’s classic by Beatrix Potter. The selection of this book, I found, was singularly unfortunate and I came to appreciate just how shrewd, bluntly honest and witty the Dales child can be.

  John, a serious little boy of about seven or eight with a tangled mop of straw-coloured hair, was clearly not very enamoured with the plot. He had arrived at that part of the story when poor Peter Rabbit, to escape the terrifying Mr McGregor who was searching for him in the vegetable garden, had become entangled in the gooseberry net. The frightened little rabbit had given himself up for lost and was shedding big tears. It was the climax to the story and when I had read this part to my little nephew Jamie and my niece Kirsten, their eyes had widened like saucers and their mouths had fallen open in expectation of the capture of the poor little rabbit by the cruel gardener. But John, having faltered in his reading, stared impassively at me with tight little lips and wide staring eyes.

  ‘What a terrible thing it would be,’ I said, hoping to encourage him on again, ‘if poor Peter Rabbit should be caught.’

  ‘Rabbits! Rabbits!’ cried the angry-faced little lad, scratching the tangled mop of hair in irritation. ‘They’re a blasted nuisance, that’s what my dad says! Have you seen what rabbits do to a rape crop?’ I answered that I had not. ‘Rabbits with little cotton-wool tails and pipe-cleaner whiskers,’ he sneered, ‘and fur as soft as velvet. Huh! We shoot ’em! They can eat their way through a rape crop in a week, can rabbits. Clear nine acres in a month! Millions of pounds’ worth of damage when it’s a mild winter. No amount of fencing will stop ’em.’

  ‘We gas ours,’ added the little girl of about ten with round cheeks and closely-cropped red hair who I had met earlier, and who was sitting nearby. ‘That stops ’em, I can tell you.’

  ‘Nay, Marianne,’ retorted the boy curling a small lip, ‘gassin’ doesn’t work.’ Then, looking me straight in the eyes, he added, ‘Never mind poor old Peter Rabbit. It’s Mr McGregor I feel sorry for – trying to grow his vegetables with a lot of ’ungry rabbits all ovver t’place!’

  ‘Perhaps we should look at another book,’ I suggested feebly.

  At morning break, Mrs Brown told me that John lived on a farm way out across the moors. It was a hard but happy life he led. He was expected, like most children from farming families, to help around the farm – feed the chickens, stack wood, muck out and undertake a host of other necessary jobs, and all that before he started his homework. He was a shrewd, good-natured, blunt-speaking little boy with a host of stories to tell about farm life. When he was little, Mrs Brown told me, he had been awakened by his father one night and taken into the byre to see the birth of a black Angus calf. The vet had suggested that it was about time the boy saw this miracle of nature. John had stood on a bale of hay in the cattle shed, staring in the half light as the great cow strained to deliver her calf. The small, wet, furry bundle soon arrived and the vet, wet with perspiration and with a triumphant look on his face, had gently wiped the calf’s mouth and then held up the new-born creature for the little boy to see. John had stared wide-eyed.

  ‘What do you think of that?’ the vet had asked him. ‘Isn’t that a wonderful sight?’

  John had thought for a moment before replying. ‘How did it swallow the dog in the first place?’ he had asked.

  In the infants, I chose a bright picture book about a brave old ram who went off into the deep, snow-packed valley to look for a lost lamb. I decided that a story about sheep, which were clearly very popular in this part of the world, would be more appropriate and less risky than rabbits. Graham, a six-year-old, began reading the story with great gusto. ‘Ronald was an old, old grey ram who lived in a wide, wide green valley near a big, big farm.’ At this point he promptly stopped reading and stared intently at the picture of the ram for a moment. It had a great smiling mouth, short horns, a fat body and shining eyes like black marbles.

  ‘What breed is that?’ Graham asked.

  ‘Breed?’ I repeated.

  ‘Aye,’ said the child. ‘What breed is he?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered in a rather pathetic tone of voice.

  ‘Don’t you know your sheep then?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I replied.

  ‘Miss,’ shouted the child, ‘could Tony come over here a minute? I want to know what breed of sheep this is.’

  We were joined by Tony, another stocky little six-year-old with red cheeks and a runny nose. ‘Let’s have a look at t’picture then,’ he said. I turned the picture book to face him. The large white sheep with black patches and a mouth full of shining teeth smiled from the page.

  ‘Is it a Masham or a Swaledale?’ he asked me.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered in the same pathetic tone of voice.

  Another child joined the discussion. ‘It looks like a blue-faced Leicester to me. What do you reckon?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I replied.

  ‘Don’t you know your sheep, then?’ I was asked again and once more replied that I did not. By this time a small crowd of interested onlookers had joined me in the reading corner.

  ‘They’re not Leicesters,’ ventured Tony, ‘because there’s a low gate in t’picture.’ There were grunts and nods of agreement from the other children.

  Before I could ask about the sig
nificance of the low gate, Graham explained. ‘Leicesters are a long-legged breed. They can get ovver low gates.’

  ‘Is it a Texel?’ ventured a plump girl, peering at the picture. Then she glanced in the direction of the ignoramus. ‘That’s a Dutch breed.’

  ‘Texels have white faces, not black,’ Graham commented.

  Very soon the whole class was concentrating on the breed of the picture-book sheep.

  ‘Well,’ smiled Mrs Beighton, ‘you are causing quite a stir in the reading corner, Mr Phinn. In order to solve the mystery, will you pop next door, Tony, ask Mrs Brown if we could borrow Marianne for a moment. Say we have a little problem she can help us solve.’ Tony scampered off into the next room. ‘Marianne has eight breeds on her farm,’ explained the teacher, ‘and her grandfather’s prize ram won a blue ribbon at the Fettlesham Agricultural Show.’

  ‘She knows her sheep does Marianne,’ I was told by a serious-looking girl with dark plaits. The children nodded in agreement. Marianne strode confidently into the classroom from the juniors.

  ‘Is it sheep?’ she asked.

  ‘What breed of sheep are these, do you reckon, Marianne?’ asked Tony.

  Marianne scrutinized the illustrations in the picture book, shook her head, sucked in her breath. All eyes were on her, everyone was waiting for the definitive answer.

  ‘I reckon they’re Bleu de Main or Rouge de l’Ouest,’ she suggested. Then she turned to the dunce holding the book and looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Them’s French breeds.’

  I was feeling mischievous and chanced my arm. ‘Oh,’ I said casually, ‘I’m a Texel man myself.’

  She looked at me intently for a moment. ‘Are you?’ she then asked suddenly.

  ‘I don’t think you can beat a good Texel.’ I had only heard the word that morning.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘they’re a hardy breed, right enough. My Uncle Bob likes Texels.’

  I was getting into my stride now. ‘I wouldn’t have any other breed,’ I said smiling. ‘You can keep your fancy French breeds, your Swaledales and your Mashams and your Leicesters with the low gates. You can’t beat a good old Texel in my opinion.’