03 Dear Teacher Read online

  ‘Hi, Anne. I’m just going home now.’

  ‘No, you’re not, you’re coming to join John and me at the Oak for a bar meal.’

  ‘Oh, thanks. Well … er, I’ll see you there.’

  ‘Everything all right, Jack? You seem preoccupied.’

  ‘I’m fine. I’ll be there in five minutes.’

  I put down the telephone and smiled grimly. It had been a long day.

  In The Royal Oak Anne and John Grainger were at the bar, ordering food, when I walked in. John Grainger stood there thoughtfully stroking his curly beard with his woodcarver’s hands. As usual, tiny flecks of sawdust coated his bushy eyebrows like fresh snow on a window ledge.

  ‘Hello, Jack. You OK?’

  ‘It’s been a busy day, John. How about you?’

  ‘I’ve been adzing a huge table top.’ I recalled seeing John using one of these heavy axe-like tools. It had appeared light in his large hands as he chipped out the special rough-hewn effect on the surface of an oak panel. ‘The woodcarvers of two hundred years ago used them to shape a ship’s timbers,’ he said.

  ‘Sounds like a satisfying day, John.’

  ‘Doing my job, Jack, every day’s a good day. I wouldn’t change it for all the tea in China.’

  Anne looked at him and smiled and I could see where she found her sense of peace beyond the hectic world of Ragley School.

  I sat back and relaxed. As usual, The Royal Oak was filled with characters. At the dominoes table, the local champion fisherman, seventy-four-year-old George Postlethwaite, was deep in conversation with Deke Ramsbottom. The trout-fishing season had begun on 25 March. George was excited because the new legislation allowed fishermen to keep their catches if the trout measured over eleven inches long. He regularly stuck out his left hand to demonstrate the length of his catches, but, as he had lost his right arm fighting for the Desert Rats in the war, it was difficult for him to be precise.

  At the piano in the taproom sat Freddie the Finger, the nine-fingered piano player from Thirkby, who was on tour. He had modelled his honky-tonk style on Russ Conway and his version of the 1959 number 1 hit ‘Side Saddle’ was always the feature of his grand finale. It was a relaxing evening with John and Anne and when we stepped out into the cold night air they waved goodnight and walked home up the Easington Road.

  I drove back to Bilbo Cottage and thought of Beth.

  The following Monday morning, when I walked into the school office I was surprised to see a large box of liquorice all-sorts on my desk. Vera looked up at me and smiled, while Sally and Jo just grinned like Cheshire cats.

  Anne broke the silence. ‘Shirley delivered them for you this morning,’ she said. ‘I think you ought to read the label.’

  I walked over to the desk and looked closely at the card attached to the box with red ribbon. In old-fashioned cursive script it simply read: To Mr Sheffield with love from a pair of strippers. XX

  I smiled and looked at the two kisses. I guessed they were both from Florence.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Day of the Daffodils

  The education welfare officer Roy Davidson and the school social worker Mary O’Neill visited school today to complete the report on Dean Pickles, following his extreme antisocial behaviour. The decision to transfer Dean to Netherbank Special School in the Yorkshire Dales was supported by the County Education Authority, the school governors and his mother, Mrs Pickles.

  Extract from the Ragley School Logbook:

  Wednesday, 16 April 1980

  PALE SPRING HAD given way to warm breezes and the chill of winter was forgotten. The earth was new, reborn. It was a day of green shoots and bright-yellow forsythia and, when I arrived at school on this April morning, all seemed well.

  From the office window I could see the children wandering up the drive, swapping stories and looking relaxed, their satchels and duffel bags swinging over their shoulders. Suddenly an irate woman in a miniskirt appeared at the school gates. When I saw the small boy alongside her, I knew immediately that this day would be different.

  I had never witnessed such anger.

  The boy’s eyes were filled with torment and he bared his teeth in a ferocious snarl. The long stick he had torn from the hedgerow was a weapon of hate. I could see his mother shouting at him but I couldn’t hear the words. She pointed towards the school and tried to grab him by the shoulder but he shook himself free and beat the stick on the ground.

  Alongside the school driveway, clumps of daffodils bobbed in the morning sunshine, offering hope of warmer days after the long winter.

  Then it happened. I could see it coming but I could do nothing about it. The boy raised his stick and systematically smashed through the stalk of every single flower. When he had finished, he threw the stick high in the air on to the school field. That was when his mother stubbed out her cigarette, grabbed his collar and dragged him into the school entrance hall.

  It was destined to be a day I would never forget, a day when a little piece of my hope and optimism was destroyed.

  It was the day I met a seven-year-old boy called Dean Pickles.

  * * *

  The first meeting with his mother did not go well.

  ‘Ah can’t do nowt wi’ ’im,’ shouted Stella Pickles. ‘ ’E’s jus’ like ’is dad, a reight waste o’ space.’

  Dean looked round the school office like a hunted animal.

  Vera took out a small Cadbury’s chocolate egg from her shopping bag. ‘Perhaps Dean would like to eat this while I get him a drink of orange juice from the kitchen,’ she said in a quiet, calm voice.

  Dean looked up in surprise and took the egg. He sat down and ripped off the silver foil eagerly and began to eat the egg.

  Vera returned quickly with a plastic tumbler of orange juice and put it next to Dean. ‘Don’t forget to put the wrapper in the bin, please, Dean,’ she said. Dean looked at Vera as if she was from another planet and carefully placed the ball of foil in the waste-paper basket.

  ‘An’ don’t gobble it all at once!’ shouted his mother.

  Vera visibly winced at the sound, while Dean ignored her completely.

  The previous evening I had received a telephone call from Roy Davidson, our education welfare officer, to say he would call in to discuss a new pupil. He mentioned a history of significant behavioural disorder and a number of previous exclusions. It sounded serious. I could now see why.

  ‘ ’E’s gone from pillar t’post,’ said Mrs Pickles. ‘ ’E can’t settle in school. It’s been like pass the bleedin’ parcel.’

  Vera recoiled at the bad language.

  ‘Just calm down, please, Mrs Pickles, and we’ll do our best.’ I glanced at Vera. ‘And if you could just temper your language we can continue.’

  Mrs Pickles flashed me a disdainful glance and began to chew on her fingernails. We learned that she had arrived in the village the previous weekend and had moved in with her mother on the outskirts of Ragley. Her husband, John Pickles, was a long-distance lorry driver and he had decided that a long distance from Stella was exactly what he wanted. A few weeks ago he’d telephoned from Inverness and told her he wasn’t coming back. Since then Dean had run wild and his mother’s attempts to curb his bad behaviour had failed.

  So it was that on this April morning we knew we were about to enrol a boy with a problem.

  By morning playtime, Vera had entered the name Dean Pickles in our register of new admissions but we were all unaware of the huge impact he was making in Jo Hunter’s classroom as we relaxed in the staff-room at morning playtime.

  I had spent twenty pence that morning on my copy of The Times and, as usual, after reading her Daily Telegraph, Vera had picked it up and scanned the headlines.

  ‘Simply splendid,’ Vera announced with enthusiasm. ‘Doesn’t he look smart?’ She pointed to the front-cover photograph of Prince Charles in his white naval officer’s uniform adorned with the striking sash of the Order of the Garter. Alongside him stood a smiling Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe�
�s prime minister-designate, at the independence ceremony in Salisbury. Both men appeared in a jocular mood. ‘The last outpost of the British Empire in Africa and the last colony in the continent comes to an end at midnight on 18 April when Zimbabwe becomes independent,’ Vera read aloud, ‘and Mr Robert Mugabe has called for a new spirit of brotherhood.’

  However, Jo had other things on her mind when she glanced down at the same front page. She looked at a photograph of the youthful Seve Ballesteros, who had just won the US Masters Golf Championship at Augusta. ‘He is now the holder of both the US and British Open titles,’ read Jo, and then held up the newspaper for Sally to see, ‘and isn’t he simply gorgeous?’ Then she sipped her coffee and added, ‘Oh, and by the way, Jack, the new boy’s a real handful.’

  I looked out of the window at a disturbance on the playground. Dean was pushing another child and I stood up to go to help Anne, who was on yard duty. As I was putting on my duffel coat, Sally was staring thoughtfully at Dean Pickles.

  ‘Remember that sixteenth-century missionary, Jack?’ she said. ‘The one called Francis Xavier.’

  I tried to recall the context. ‘Ah, yes, I remember now. “Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” … Yes, I see what you mean,’ I said and hurried outside.

  At lunchtime, Roy Davidson called in with Dean’s educational records. They made unhappy reading. ‘It’s probably worse, Jack,’ said Roy, ‘now that his father has left home.’

  So it went on, day by day, until one week later, after school on Wednesday, 16 April, Anne and I sat silently in the staff-room. It had been a long meeting and darkness had fallen. No one had got up to close the curtains. Our thoughts were elsewhere.

  The Revd Joseph Evans sat with his head bowed and hands clasped tightly as if in prayer. Roy Davidson, his long, prematurely grey hair hanging over his lined forehead, was bent over his spiral notepad, making careful notes. Mary O’Neill, our visiting social worker, had completed her report and there was silence in the staff-room. I was now faced with the most difficult decision I had ever had to make as a headmaster.

  ‘Well, Jack?’ said Roy, looking up from his note-making.

  I stared at the office clock. The second hand ticked round as I sought for solutions. Mary passed the neatly typed report to Anne, who scanned it and shook her head in anguish.

  ‘I can’t remember Ragley School expelling any child before, Jack,’ said Anne. As usual, Anne had put into words what we were all thinking. ‘Expulsion is so final,’ she added quietly. ‘If we send him away we’re saying we’ve failed … Ragley School has failed.’

  ‘You haven’t failed,’ said Mary firmly.

  The Revd Joseph Evans had come to the same conclusion. ‘We must consider the safety of the other children as well as the welfare of the boy,’ he added.

  ‘I really can’t see what else we can do,’ said Roy. Mary nodded in agreement.

  I picked up the detailed report and studied it for one last time. It seemed more than a week since it had all begun. The list of violent acts of behaviour was lengthy – fighting in the playground, kicking a dinner lady, swearing at his teacher, damage to school property – and each day was worse than the one before. The procession of parents at my door complaining about the boy’s behaviour had become too long to ignore. Dean Pickles was clearly a threat to the safety of the other pupils of Ragley School.

  ‘If it’s any help, Jack,’ said Roy, ‘I know the perfect place for Dean and my guess is we would get parental consent without any problem.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘At a special school in the Yorkshire Dales that caters for children with behavioural and emotional difficulties. It’s called Netherbank Hall and it’s tucked away in the most beautiful countryside.’

  ‘I know it well,’ said Mary. ‘Dean could have a chance to grow there in a stable community.’

  I looked at Anne. ‘I have to put the safety of the other pupils first, Anne.’

  ‘I agree,’ she said quietly.

  I unscrewed the top of my fountain pen, signed on the line next to the word ‘Headteacher’ and passed it to Joseph. He signed, Mary added the date and Roy stood up and shook my hand.

  ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow from the office,’ he said.

  Mary paused in the doorway as she followed him out and turned back to leave a parting message. ‘Don’t worry, Jack. Sadly, I’ve seen this many times and what we’re doing is for the best.’

  Everyone left until there was just Anne and me checking windows and locking doors. I gave her a lift home and, as we pulled up in the Crescent and said good night, she leaned back in the car and said, ‘Do you know what’s really sad, Jack? This little boy doesn’t even know what love is.’

  There is something magnetic about puddles in the playground. Small children, like iron filings, are drawn irresistibly to their allure. Those with imagination were standing alone like castaways on their personal desert island. Others made lolly-stick boats and raced them. Then, of course, there were boys like Heathcliffe Earnshaw who simply took a running jump and landed in the centre, ensuring everyone in a ten-yard radius, particularly girls, was thoroughly soaked.

  It was a damp Thursday morning and playtime had returned to normal. Dean Pickles was at home, packing a small rucksack, and his mother had made it clear she was glad to be rid of him. Mary O’Neill had arranged to take Dean and Mrs Pickles the following day to Netherbank Hall, where he would be admitted for full-time residential education at the school. Roy and I had agreed to drive out there on Sunday morning and check he had settled in. I leaned against the school railings and reflected on the difficult decision that had resulted in the little boy’s departure.

  At lunchtime, Vera made an announcement in the staff-room. ‘I trust you will all be coming to the church social in the vicarage on Saturday afternoon,’ she said. It sounded like a command from on high and certainly not one to be refused.

  ‘Of course, Vera. I shall look forward to it,’ I said and everyone else nodded in agreement.

  ‘Dan might be on duty, Vera, but I’ll be there,’ said Jo.

  Vera looked at me knowingly and added, ‘Miss Henderson is coming, Mr Sheffield, and I do hope you will help me persuade her to join the church choir.’

  On Saturday afternoon the courtyard in front of the vicarage was filled with cars, notably a large, black classic Bentley. The chauffeur was leaning against the bonnet and Vera had come out to serve him tea.

  ‘Hello, Vera,’ I said. ‘I see the major’s here.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Sheffield. Thank you for coming,’ said Vera, and she glanced through the trees towards the church. ‘Rupert is with his daughter – it’s a regular visit for them … His wife was a dear friend.’

  Under a tall elm tree in a beautifully manicured grassy corner of the churchyard the major stood with his daughter, Virginia. The young woman replaced the flowers in the ornate cast-iron vase and put the spent ones in a small carrier bag. Then the major put his arm round her shoulders and together they stood quietly under a canopy of dappled sunlight and shadow. Many years had passed since the major’s wife had died, but for both the major and his daughter it was important there were always fresh flowers on her grave.

  ‘Let’s leave them in peace,’ said Vera, touching my arm. She was right. We were intruding.

  Soon I was drinking tea from a delicate china cup and nibbling on a triangular cress sandwich, from which the crusts had been neatly removed, when I caught the familiar scent of Rive Gauche perfume and Beth was standing next to me.

  ‘Hello, Jack. How are you?’ She brushed her honey-blonde hair away from her high cheekbones and smiled up at me. Her green eyes looked tired.

  ‘A bit weary, to be honest, Beth. It’s been a busy week.’

  ‘I heard about the expulsion. That must have been difficult.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m going out to see him tomorrow at Netherbank Hall. I’m praying we’ve done the right thing … I certainly hope
so.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be fine, Jack.’ Beth poured herself a fresh cup of tea from a large china teapot. ‘And I appreciated the maths scheme. I was struggling with mine.’

  ‘If I can ever help, Beth, you know I’m here.’

  Around us everyone looked relaxed. Anne was deep in conversation with Sally, while Jo was asking Vera how to make vol-au-vents. Joseph, Albert Jenkins and John Grainger had crept out to the kitchen to sample Joseph’s latest home-made, highly potent vintage.

  ‘And … I’m glad we spoke about Laura,’ I said.

  Beth picked up a silver teaspoon and stirred her tea. ‘Yes, Jack, so am I.’

  Suddenly there was an explosion in the kitchen. ‘I told Joseph not to open that dreadful wine!’ said Vera in dismay. Everyone laughed as Joseph peered anxiously round the door and Vera rushed to the broom cupboard in the hall.

  Beth smiled and, for the first time, she looked relaxed.

  ‘There was something I wanted to ask you, Beth.’ I looked round to check we couldn’t be overheard. ‘I wondered if I could ring you … to, er, go out possibly.’

  Beth put down her cup and saucer and looked up at me. ‘Yes, Jack. I’d like that.’

  Vera suddenly reappeared, looking a little flushed. ‘Now, Mr Sheffield, I do hope you have asked Miss Henderson to join our church choir.’

  ‘I was just about to,’ I said with a wink to Beth as the last of the April clouds scurried away and the room was filled with sunlight.

  On Sunday morning, Roy Davidson and I set off in my car. The Vale of York is the heart of the vast county of Yorkshire, ninety miles from north to south. We sped through the rich agricultural flatland of wheat and barley, with occasional fields of sugar beet, potatoes, carrots, cabbages and brussels sprouts, and headed north-west towards Skipton, ‘the gateway to the Dales’. Driving over the high ground of Blubberhouses I felt that familiar tingle of wonderment as I surveyed this great county. It was my kingdom of cathedrals, moorlands and mills, my home of beer and brass bands, Ridings and rugby, my land of coastlines and cricket. Beyond the market town of Skipton we drove on towards limestone hills and clear rivers. The purple bulk of the Pennines filled the far distance and memories of forgotten looms, cotton and cloth flickered across my mind.