The Heart of the Dales (3 page)

David, Julie and I surveyed the room, hot, tired and ready for home.

‘Well, that's a job well done,' I said.

‘I shall miss this room, you know,' said David. ‘Even though we complained over the years about the lack of space, the icy draughts in winter and the unbearable heat in summer –'

‘The creaking floor and threadbare bit of carpet,' added Julie.

‘And the uncomfortable chairs and the fact that we couldn't find anything amidst the clutter, but it did have character,' said David. He ran his hand across a desktop. ‘I shall miss my old desk.'

‘Although I, too, feel rather sorry having to leave the place,' I said, ‘we shall be able to spread out in the new office with its modern furniture, and we won't have those stairs to climb every day.'

At that very moment we heard heavy footsteps on the selfsame stairs, accompanied by a loud and discordant voice giving a rendering of ‘Come Back to Sorrento'.

‘Tell me I am imagining things,' whispered David.

‘No,' said Julie, ‘it's Mr Clamp all right.'

The great bearded figure with the deep-set, earnest eyes appeared at the door like a pantomime villain. Sidney stopped singing, removed a large fedora hat in a flourish and beamed at us. Then he stared beyond us and around the empty office.

‘Sweet angels of mercy!' he cried. ‘Where is everything? The place is as bare as Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard.' We stood looking at him, stony-faced and silent. ‘Whatever is the matter with you three?' he asked. ‘You look like some strange Eastern statues. From the look on your faces, it appears that I am intruding on some private grief.'

David breathed in noisily, raised his eyes heavenwards but said nothing.

‘Hello, Sidney,' I said.

‘Did you forget, Mr Clamp,' asked Julie, ‘that we were moving into the new office this week and that we had to clear everything out from here to there?'

‘Aaaaah,' groaned Sidney smacking his forehead dramatically with the flat of his hand. ‘The move, the move! Of course, we're relocating to the new office this term, aren't we?'

‘We are,' I said.

‘I only popped in to collect my mail,' he said. He tapped his chin thoughtfully. ‘Was it this week we were supposed to be moving?'

‘It was,' I said.

‘We have to be out of here by the end of the day so Social Services can come in on Monday,' added Julie. ‘The three of us have had to take all your stuff downstairs to the new office for you.'

‘We assumed you weren't coming in today,' I told him.

‘How awfully decent of you to move my bits and bobs,' said Sidney. Then his face clouded over. ‘I say, I do hope that you have taken great care with my things. There were a lot of valuable artefacts amongst my possessions. Dear God,' he said, his eyes roving round the almost empty room, ‘what have you done with Aphrodite?'

Sidney had a fairly ghastly white plaster model of the Goddess of Love, which he used in his drawing classes.

‘Aphrodite is safe and well in the new office,' replied David who, amidst loud complaining, had carried the scantily clad female downstairs.

‘I trust you haven't been heavy handed with the portfolios and not damaged any of the artwork,' Sidney continued. ‘I know how maladroit you can sometimes be, David.' He strode across to what had been his desk, and wrenched open the top drawer. ‘Oh heavens, there were some most important documents in this drawer. What's happened to them?'

‘Don't panic,' I said, ‘I've locked them away in your new desk downstairs.'

The telephone sitting on Sidney's desk suddenly rang, echoing round the almost empty room. Julie, standing nearest it, picked it up.

‘Inspectors' office,' she said. She listened for a moment, nodded her blonde head, and then replaced the receiver. ‘That was Mr Reid of Social Services. He said that we shouldn't rush as they are somewhat behind schedule and won't be ready to move up here until Tuesday at the earliest.'

‘Open the window, Gervase,' said David, slowly and quietly, ‘I am about to jump out.'

Thursday morning of the first week of the new autumn term found me at Ugglemattersby County Junior School to undertake what I imagined to be a morning's routine follow-up inspection. The building, unlike many of the Dales village schools in Yorkshire, was entirely without character: a featureless, squat, grey stone structure with long, metal-framed windows, blue slate roof and a heavy black door. It was dwarfed by the neighbouring boarded-up, red-brick Masonic Hall on one side and a down-at-the-mouth public house on the other.

I had visited the school some two years earlier on a bleak and blustery morning in late April. Setting off from the Inspectors' Division of the Education Department in the bustling market town of Fettlesham, I had driven through a desolate, rain-soaked landscape of rolling grey moors to reach the school in the large sprawling village of Ugglemattersby.

On that occasion, I had not been impressed with the standard of education provided and my largely critical report had led to the enforced early retirement of the headteacher. Mr Sharples, a dour man, with the smile of a martyr about to be burnt at the stake, had rattled on in wearisome detail about the stresses and strains, pressures and problems, difficulties and disappointments he had to face day after day. He had bemoaned the awkward parents, interfering governors, disillusioned teachers, lazy cleaners and wilful children, and now critical school inspectors had appeared on the scene to depress him even more.

‘I feel like jumping off Hopton Crags,' he had told me disconsolately, ‘or down a pothole at Grimstone Gill, I really do.'

In actual fact, he had jumped – jumped at the chance, when offered a generous package, to retire early and the last I had
heard of him he was running a health-food shop in Whitby, happily selling dried fruit, cashew nuts and wholemeal flour.

A new headteacher, Mr Harrison, was appointed. I had sat on the interview panel and had been impressed with this youthful, bright-eyed deputy headteacher from a large multiracial school in inner-city London, who had performed extremely well, impressing the panel with his enthusiasm, good humour and by the vivid description of how he would set about changing things for the better were he to be appointed.

Sadly on this September morning, if the initial impressions I had were anything to go by, the new headteacher had not come up to expectations, for little appeared to have altered since my last visit. What I thought would be a meeting of ten or fifteen minutes before classes started, turned out to be quite different.

‘It's been difficult, Mr Phinn,' Mr Harrison told me sadly, tugging nervously at his small moustache. ‘I rather imagined that moving north to such a lovely part of the country, to become the headteacher of a village school in rural Yorkshire, would be idyllic and certainly less challenging and stressful than at my last school in the inner city. I little imagined the problems I would have to face.' He sounded unnervingly like his predecessor and, indeed, was beginning to take on Mr Sharples' appearance, too.

The headteacher seemed to have aged considerably since our last meeting at his interview. As I sat in his cramped office that morning, I was concerned at the change I saw in him after so short a time. Gone were the broad and winning smile, the bright eyes, the bubbly enthusiasm and the confident manner. He looked ashen and deeply uncomfortable and stared at me with the doleful eyes of a sick spaniel.

‘Perhaps you would like to tell me about it,' I said, realising that what I imagined would be a pleasant, uneventful routine visit was turning into something likely to be far more problematic.

‘Well, this is a very different world from the one I knew in London,' Mr Harrison continued. He interlaced his fingers
slowly and rested them beneath his chin in the attitude of a child at prayer, and then took a deep audible breath. ‘I came from a large multi-cultural and very vibrant inner-city school where the staff worked hard and pulled together. The children were challenging and, yes, perhaps a little too lively at times. We had our fair share of problems, but it was a very positive and productive environment. Ugglemattersby is completely different. In terms of discipline, the children are biddable enough, though rather blunt, but everything is so – how can I put it – laid back. Your report on Mr Sharples' regime quite rightly mentioned the lack of rigour and creativity in the curriculum and, since starting, I have attempted to change things but, sadly, with little apparent success. People in this part of the world seem very resistant to change. The parents on the surface are friendly – well, most of them – and, like their children, they too certainly speak their minds, but I can't say I've been accepted. I think you have to live in the area for upwards of three centuries to lose the tag of “off-comed-un”.'

‘I know what you mean,' I replied. ‘I've only been in this part of the county for four years myself and, despite being Yorkshire born and bred, I am definitely still in the category of the alien foreigner.'

‘If I may say so, Mr Phinn, it's hardly the same for you.' The headteacher rose from his chair and stood looking pensively out of the small window, his hands clasped behind him. ‘School inspectors travel around and are not confined to live and work every day in the heart of a closed, parochial community where everyone knows everybody else's business. My wife and I bought our dream house in the centre of the village, a little stone cottage with beams and a flagstone floor and a stream at the bottom of the garden, which, with hindsight, was a mistake. My wife can't walk down the street in Ugglemattersby without a curtain moving, she can't say anything in the post office without it being broadcast around the whole neighbourhood and she can't purchase an item from the village shop without all and sundry knowing what we are having for tea. I get stopped by parents all the time, wishing to discuss their children's
education.' He turned away from the window, bit his lip momentarily and began tugging nervously at his moustache once again. ‘It's so very claustrophobic!'

‘I see.' He should have considered all this, I thought to myself, before he had accepted the position, but I kept this observation to myself and changed the subject. ‘Does Mrs Braddock-Smith at the Infant School have this problem?' I asked.

‘Ugglemattersby Infant School,' Mr Harrison told me, sitting down again at his desk, ‘is in a much better position than mine. For a start, Mrs Braddock-Smith's school is not in the centre of the village, sandwiched between the noisy pub and a derelict building, like we are. The people who live on the new estate of executive houses send their children to the Infant School. From what I have heard, they are very supportive and have great expectations for their children. Staff at the Infant School are keen, hard-working and ambitious, and the headteacher very sensibly lives outside the catchment area.'

I had visited Ugglemattersby Infant School just after I had started as a school inspector and remembered it as a modern, spacious building with endless views across the ever-changing moors. When, a number of years earlier, the village had begun to increase and the pupil population accordingly, it had been decided to split the Juniors from the Infants, then currently in the one school, and the new school had been built on a large open site just outside the village. I also recalled the extremely confident and effusive headteacher who spent most of our meeting singing the praises of her wonderful school.

‘Well,' I said to the obviously unhappy headteacher, ‘perhaps you ought to consider moving.'

‘To be honest, I have been looking for other jobs.'

‘I meant moving house,' I said quickly.

‘Oh, I see. To be frank, it's not the fact that I live in the village that's the real problem,' Mr Harrison continued disconsolately, resting his hands on his desk. ‘I can just about cope with the twitching curtains and the lack of any privacy. It's the people I work with.' He shook his head again, took a deep
breath and lowered his voice. His gullet rose and fell like a frog's. ‘The two teachers I inherited are not exactly incompetent but, my goodness, they can be difficult. They do the very minimum, and are not the most enthusiastic or accommodating of colleagues, either. In fact, they spend most of the day complaining, as you will no doubt discover. Mrs Battersby, who teaches the top Juniors, has been here all her teaching career. Not only that, she attended the school herself as a child, went to school with most of the grandparents and taught most of the children's mothers and fathers. She's part of the furniture. In fact, the wing-backed armchair she sits in in the staff room, she brought from home. Her husband, another former pupil, owns an antique shop in the village. He's a parish councillor, churchwarden, treasurer of the Pigeon Fanciers Society, a stalwart of the community. He knows everything and everybody. Mrs Battersby leaves school two seconds after the bell to help her husband in the shop. You would think from her reaction when I suggested that she might like to produce the school play or attend an additional parents' meeting that I was making some grossly improper advance.

‘The other teacher, Mrs Sidebottom – which she prefers to be pronounced Siddybothome – well, I don't know where to start with her. She, too, has been here many years and is far far pricklier. It's like dancing through a minefield every time I speak to her. We never hit it off from the start after I mentioned that I felt her manner with the children was rather sharp. Of course, as soon as I took over as the headteacher, I followed your recommendations to send them both on courses but it was wishful thinking to imagine that a couple of days of in-service training at the Staff Development Centre was going to change the habits of a lifetime. They came back saying what a complete waste of time it had been and I later discovered the science guidelines, recommendations and notes given by Dr Mullarkey, the tutor, had been deposited in a wastepaper basket. Again, as you suggested in the report, I did insist that they planned their lessons more carefully, which they now do – more or less, anyway – and to mark the children's work more
thoroughly, which they have done with something of a vengeance, but I have got nowhere with my requests that they should contribute rather more to the life and workof the school. Mention out-of-school activities and they look fit to faint. They are forever reminding me that it is not in their contract. I am sorry to say that many of my efforts have fallen on stony ground.'