The Heart of the Dales (29 page)

‘What?' I exclaimed. ‘Tell Dr Gore that? I'd have got the sack.'

‘Nonsense!' cried Sidney. ‘You could have wrung your hands, sighed and shuffed in your chair, wiped your fevered brow and told him it was all becoming too too much for you. It would have been a
coup de mâtre
,' said Sidney.

‘If you continue talking like a French phrase-book, Sidney,' said David, ‘I'm off.'

‘Of course,' continued his colleague unabashed, ‘I put it down to post-natal depression.'

‘Post-natal depression?' I repeated.

‘Oh yes,' said Sidney. ‘It doesn't just affect mothers, you know. Fathers are susceptible too and you seem to me like a classic case. You look tired, overworked and ill-at-ease.'

‘Well, that should cheer the man up and no mistake,' said David.

‘It happened to me when my daughter, Tanya, was born,' said Sidney. ‘After all the euphoria of the birth and holding the little bundle in my arms, the despondency and dejection set in. I couldn't put paintbrush to canvas for a whole year. I had sleepless night after sleepless night. I would doze off and then be woken up in the early hours to feed this wrinkled, little piggy-faced whelp, squawking and squealing and wriggling about. It was like listening to a bat being nailed to a door. And then having to change her and get her off to sleep again.

It was a waking nightmare. The next morning I would struggle downstairs, and I can promise you that there's nothing more guaranteed to bring on nausea than having to face a bucket full of dirty nappies first thing.'

‘My dear departed Welsh grandmother had thirteen children and brought them up in a terraced house with only one tin bath,' said David. ‘You never heard her complain. You want to count yourself lucky.'

‘Sweet angels of mercy!' cried Sidney, ‘Please, oh please, spare us from the dear departed Welsh grandmother.'

‘Actually I don't mind changing the baby,' I told Sidney, ‘and since Christine is breast-feeding, I don't have to get up in the middle of the night, so it's certainly nothing to do with that.'

However, it worried me that Sidney had noticed I was under something of a strain. There was no doubt that the problems at Ugglemattersby were still preying on my mind. I would shortly be attending a meeting of the parents of the children at both schools, something I was not looking forward to at all.

‘Lucky you,' said Sidney. ‘My wife had cracked nipples and, as I recall, I came out in sympathy. Lila couldn't wear anything tight-fitting for a month. She had to express the breast milk using this peculiar-looking rubber-nozzled gadget given to her by the health visitor. Now, she was a Gorgon if ever there was. I gave her the
nom de guerre
of Sister Enema since she constantly asked about the baby's stools. “My dear woman,” I told her, “the baby cannot sit up yet, never mind coping with a stool.” She was not amused.'

‘I'm not at all surprised,' said David. ‘Very feeble. Anyway, do we have to hear all this?' he asked. ‘If we have to talk about something, couldn't it at least be a pleasanter topic than cracked nipples and stools?'

Sidney, however, was not in the mood to be stopped. ‘You'll have far more important things to worry about raising a child, Gervase, than cracked nipples and stools. When that cuddly little bundle of joy gets to adolescence, shaves all his hair off, comes home sporting tattoos on his chest, answers you in
grunts and lives in squalor in his room, when he wants to roam the streets at night because all his mates' parents allow them to, and when he hogs both the telephone and the bathroom, then you will have something to worry about.'

‘What an optimistic view of adolescence,' observed David.

‘And, later,' Sidney went on, ‘when he embarks on a twenty-six-year-long art course at university in London, you will have to pay through the nose for his lodgings and upkeep. Then you will question whether it is worth being a father.'

‘Can you imagine having Sidney for a father?' sighed David.

‘I'm a splendid father, I'll have you know,' exclaimed Sidney, ‘and always have been. I was both a model husband and father. Before work, I would take Lila her morning tea, then breakfast in bed, newspaper and the baby, all changed, washed and scrubbed. Our first Christmas with Tanya, just for a bit of a wheeze, I wrapped the turkey in the baby's shawl and took that up instead of the baby. Lila opened the shawl to find this turkey looking up at her. Well, of course, it didn't actually look up at her. It was plucked. “Where's the baby?” screamed Lila. “Oh gosh!” I said. “I must have put her in the oven.”'

‘Sidney!' I exclaimed. ‘That's dreadful.'

‘That's what Sister Enema said,' Sidney continued, ‘when Lila told her about it. She said I could have dried her milkup.' He tipped his chair forward from its perilous position, and put his elbows on his desk. ‘You know, I came in early this morning, hoping to finish some reports. It is always the same when you two are in the office together. I can never get a thing done.'

David and I looked at each other but didn't say anything.

After a minute's blissful silence, David asked, ‘So what's this little job that Dr Gore has given you, Gervase?'

‘He's asked me to help organise a conference,' I said. ‘Our esteemed leader is this year's president of some high-powered association called NACADS.'

‘NACADS!' exclaimed Sidney.

‘No! No!' exclaimed David. ‘He can't be. You have to work
in the mines to be a member of that. Dr Gore wouldn't recognise a pit if he had one at the bottom of his garden.'

‘Mining?' I asked puzzled. ‘What's mining got to do with it?'

‘Ours is a strong mining family,' David told me. ‘Generations have worked down the pit.'

‘I can see her now,' said Sidney, ‘that old Welsh grandmother of yours, in pit boots and helmet and carrying her lamp, emerging black as the ace of spades from the mine, having shovelled nutty slack all day and wending her weary way home to prepare tea for her thirteen hungry children. It brings a tear to the eye.'

‘If you must know –' began David.

‘Actually, we really don't need to know,' interrupted his colleague, leaning lazily back in his chair and looking at David with humorous idleness.

‘If you must know,' continued David, ignoring Sidney, ‘my father was an offcial in that association. He rose up the ranks from miner to deputy. Forty-five years my father worked down the pit. Forty-five years and never missed a day.'

‘I bet he missed a few baths, though,' said Sidney, ‘what with the thirteen children and the one tin tub.'

‘My father was the local convener for NACODS,' said David. ‘The National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers.'

‘No, this is NACADS,' I told him, accentuating the second “A”. ‘The National Association of Chief Administrators and Directors of Schools.'

‘NACADS,' mused Sidney, leaning back precariously on his chair. ‘It sounds like a self-help group for world-weary geriatrics. Mind you, I guess if it were, Dr Gore would feel very much at home being president of that. I've noticed of late how tired and irritable he's getting. Two peas in the old colloquial pod, you two, Gervase.'

‘Perhaps he's suffering from post-natal depression as well,' said David.

‘I've been given the job of organising various exhibitions
and events,' I told them. ‘Displays of children's work, the usual sort of thing.'

‘And does this little job of Dr Gore's mean having to liaise with Mrs Savage?' asked David.

‘Yes, it does,' I replied glumly. ‘I wouldn't mind doing his little job for him but the thought of having to liaise with the Ice Queen herself fills me with dismay.'

‘Poor you,' said Sidney.

‘Oh dear,' groaned David. ‘I can hear the rumble of enemy fire. I suppose this is the conference she was going on about during the summer holidays.'

‘When? I never heard any mention of it,' said Sidney, twiddling a pencil round and round in his fingers.

‘No, it was when you were swanning around Italy, and we were packing up the office, including all your things,' I replied.

‘Ah, yes, that was most kind of you – if only I could find where you've put everything. I still haven't found my earthenware vase. However, that is nothing compared to having to work with our Brenda.'

‘That woman is insuerable!' said David. ‘Last week she had the brass neckto send back two of my reports with corrections. Corrections! The impertinence of it, correcting my English.'

‘Well, I would have thought you would have welcomed that,' said Sidney, being deliberately provocative. ‘I well recall a conversation we had last year when you were bemoaning the sloppy use of English.'

‘As usual, Sidney, you are missing the point,' said David irritably. ‘You are quite happy giving everyone the benefit of your views whether they want to hear them or not but you are incapable of listening to others. I am perfectly capable of using correct English, thank you very much. My point is that Mrs Savage returned a report to me with corrections on.'

‘On which there were corrections,' interrupted his colleague.

‘On which there were corrections,' repeated David, ‘but these corrections did not need to be corrected.'

‘Well, that sounds perfectly clear to me,' said Sidney. ‘Did you understand him, Gervase?'

‘Behave yourself, Sidney,' I told him. ‘What did you write, David?'

‘I wrote,' said David, ‘that the Head of the Mathematics Department at Lady Cavendish High School for Girls, and I quote, “sets the standard by which the remainder of the department is judged”. Mrs Savage took it upon her self to change it to “are judged”, which is, of course, incorrect. I told her in no uncertain terms when I saw her swanning down the top corridor at County Hall with a face as hard as a diamond, like some mature model out of a woman's magazine, pretending to be all important, that I was not going to put up with it.'

‘You mean up with it you were not going to put,' said Sidney.

‘I'll come over there in a minute, my friend,' exclaimed David, ‘and knock you off that chair and put you flat on your back!'

‘Mrs Savage is the last person to start advising people how to use English,' I said. ‘She continually uses a whole new vocabulary of dead terms and office catchphrases: “coming aboard”, “running things up flagpoles”, “getting up to speed”, “blue sky thinking”, “squaring the circle”, “touching base”. It's a whole new language.'

‘She goes on a one-day course in office management,' said Sidney, ‘and comes back with all this gobbledegook.'

‘Like a certain art inspector who goes to Italy for a fortnight and comes back peppering all his conversation with French phrases,' said David.

‘
Touché
!' said Sidney.

‘I mean, I don't mind being picked up by someone who uses English well, but certainly not by Mrs Savage. As my dear departed Welsh grandmother used to say' – Sidney sighed dramatically and rolled his eyes – ‘“before you look at the mote in someone else's eye, take a look at the tree in your own.”'

‘I don't see how you could see anything with a tree in your eye,' said Sidney.

‘And what surprises me,' continued David, deciding to
ignore Sidney's flippant remark, ‘is why Dr Gore allows her to get away with it. Take that crass document she sent about the school closures. It was incomprehensible.'

‘Maybe because our dear Dr Gore is just too exhausted and worn out. She is enough to make the most even-tempered person exhausted and irritable. I should think the old man feels thoroughly NACADS.'

‘Well,' said David, ‘I wish you luck working with that woman, I really do.'

‘In the long tradition of
esprit de corps
, which exists in our little team, Gervase,' said Sidney, ‘you know that if we can be of any help we would be only too happy to oblige –
tous ensemble
.'

‘Of course,' agreed David, ‘that goes without question. I am more than happy to help you. I will, of course, produce an exhibition of mathematics teaching and children's work and, if you wish, I could arrange a gymnastics display and perhaps a performance of traditional dancing.'

‘That sounds excellent,' I said.

‘I don't mind a bit of gymnastics,' said Sidney, ‘but could we leave out the Morris dancing? And I shall be only too pleased to mount
une exposition magnifique
of children's painting and sculpture. I like nothing better than celebrating young people's efforts and I have just the person in mind to help me. The newly appointed Head of Art at Crompton Secondary Modern,
la charmante
Colette, an inspirational teacher and also an inspiration to look at.'

‘Ah! I thought there would be a woman somewhere in your scheme of things,' sighed David. ‘And I suppose she's French, is she?'

‘However did you guess?' asked Sidney with mock surprise in his voice.

‘I wondered why we have been bombarded with all these Gallic phrases,' said David. ‘Been brushing up on your French, have you?'

‘She is the perfect Pre-Raphaelite beauty,' said Sidney, raising his hand like a priest about to give a blessing. ‘Tall, pale-complexioned with piercing violet eyes and delicate slender
hands, and with an explosion of auburn hair cascading straight down her back. A long-legged goddess.
Une belle femme
. She could have walked out of the canvas of a Burne-Jones masterpiece. I shall get onto it
pronto
.'

‘Give me strength!' cried David. ‘He's gone into Italian now.'

‘I'm feeling better already,' I said.

‘And no doubt Geraldine will come up with something spectacular,' said David. ‘Now there's an example to any parent. You don't hear her complaining about sleepless nights, changing nappies and post-natal depression. I take my hat off to her, bringing up a child single-handed.'