Authors: Jack Sheffield
Extract from the Ragley School Logbook:
Thursday, 25 March 1982
It was early on Thursday, 25 March, and Beth and I had spent the previous night together. It had been a wonderful night followed by a slightly tense morning.
She looked around the kitchen in dismay. ‘Jack, we really do need to bring Bilbo Cottage into the twentieth century – starting with a decent washing machine.’
‘Sorry, Beth,’ I said, ‘I’d never really thought about it.’ We had been using Beth’s old washing machine in her rented cottage in Morton but a permanent remedy was required.
‘I’ve done some research on it,’ she said, ‘and this should be perfect.’ She gave me a cutting from the
York Evening Press
. It read ‘Caravell DL500 fully automatic washing machine with a 9lb load capacity, £149.00’.
‘It looks really … er, modern,’ I said hesitantly. Washing machines were not in my comfort zone.
‘And they’ll deliver it immediately.’ Beth sounded determined. She looked at her watch. ‘Well, must rush, Jack. I’m due at High Sutton in an hour.’
Beth had been invited by Miss Barrington-Huntley to join a North Yorkshire curriculum working group for an intensive four-day course. It was clear the concept of a ‘common curriculum’ for all schools was gathering momentum and Beth was keen to be involved. I carried her suitcase out to her slightly rusty, pale-blue Volkswagen Beetle and kissed her goodbye.
‘Drive safely, Beth,’ I said, ‘and I’ll see you on Sunday evening.’
As she roared off, the scent of Rive Gauche perfume lingered.
Then I took the washing machine ad from my pocket and smiled. I would give her a surprise.
My journey to school was uplifting. The harsh days of winter were over. Rooks cawed in the elm-tops and the first cuckoo announced the arrival of spring. In the bare hedgerows the sharp buds of hawthorn guarded the arrowheads of daffodils and on Ragley High Street the first primroses splashed the grassy banks with fresh colour. As I pulled into the school car park it was good to be alive as the early-morning sunshine washed over me.
In the entrance hall, it was a hive of activity. A group of mothers were deep in conversation with Sally and Jo about seventeenth-century costume. Sally, our history enthusiast, had organized an educational visit tomorrow to Clarke Hall, near Wakefield, for the children in the top two classes. It was part of our joint history project and costume-making had dominated the past week. As usual, of course, there were a few who had left it to the last minute.
‘Our ’Eathcliffe sez’e wants t’be a
buccaneer
– at least ah think it were a buccaneer,’ said Mrs Earnshaw.
‘A buccaneer?’ said Sally in surprise.
‘An’ our Terry wants t’be a pheasant or summat,’ she added for good measure.
‘He probably meant a
musketeer
,’ said Sally politely.
‘And a
peasant
,’ added Jo, who wasn’t going on the visit but was always willing to show solidarity.
Mrs Earnshaw, unmoved, pressed on and pulled two pairs of her husband’s cut-down trousers and two of his old shirts from a carrier bag.
‘These will be perfect, Mrs Earnshaw,’ said the ever-supportive Sally. Meanwhile, the lively toddler Dallas Sue-Ellen Earnshaw had pulled a garment out of the ‘finished costumes’ bag and was tugging the waistband out of a pair of breeches.
Sue Phillips and Petula Dudley-Palmer had brought their sewing machines into school; Petula’s, naturally, was the latest in modern technology. Betty Buttle, Margery Ackroyd, Marion Greening and Cynthia Clack were cutting, sewing and stitching as if their lives depended on it. Sally was the self-appointed shop steward, while Vera appeared to be in charge of quality control. It resembled the backroom of Burton’s, the Leeds-based tailor’s shop.
‘First of all, you have to decide your station in life,’ said Sally: ‘maybe a lord or a lady.’
‘Or a soldier or a peasant, Mr Sheffield,’ added Vera.
‘Well, we’ve used wool or cotton for authenticity,’ said Sue Phillips and all the mothers nodded knowingly.
‘And I’ve read skirts and breeches were particularly baggy,’ added Petula Dudley-Palmer, not to be outdone.
I nodded politely and hurried into the office to escape their clutches. Sadly I was the product of a boys’ grammar school education and, for me, sewing was an elusive art. A few minutes later I was busy ordering a set of brass metric weights and a box of wooden thirty-centimetre rulers when there was a tap on the door. Sue Phillips and Sally came in, each clutching a bundle. Sue held up a large bright-red, embroidered shirt and Sally draped a pair of brown breeches on my desk. ‘You’ll look good in these, Jack,’ said a whimsical Sue Phillips.
I stared in disbelief. The outfit looked perfect for Adam and the Ants but not for a Yorkshire headteacher.
‘Oh, thanks, Sue,’ I said hesitantly. ’… As long as I don’t look, well, er, you know.’
‘Don’t worry, Jack,’ said Sally with a broad grin, ‘you’ll blend in nicely. I’ve even decorated your breeches with rows of shiny buttons down the outside seams.’
‘Very fetching,’ I said dubiously.
‘Actually, Jack,’ said Sally, ‘they had a practical purpose. Musketeers used them as ammunition when they ran out of musket balls or shot.’
Not for the first time I wondered how Sally knew all this.
* * *
Our morning lessons went well and it was encouraging to see that the children had already done a lot of background reading on our ‘England in the Seventeenth Century’ project.
‘So what do we know about Oliver Cromwell, boys and girls?’ I asked.
‘He won the Battle of Naseby, Mr Sheffield,’ said Jonathan Greening.
‘And he overthrew King Charles I,’ said Alice Baxter.
‘Well done,’ I said.
The children had obviously enjoyed researching the battles and politics of this tempestuous time. Best of all, everyone was looking forward to Friday morning when we would dress up in costume and visit Clarke Hall, near Wakefield. There we would go back three hundred years and experience life as it was then. It would bring history to life and the children were full of excitement. I recalled doing a turgid history course at A level in the 1960s and wished it could have been like this.
In the staff-room at morning break, Vera was glancing through the headlines of her
Daily Telegraph
. The number of unemployed had dipped below three million and the harsh winter had resulted in a £200 million insurance payout, the largest ever recorded for a natural disaster. Also, in Parliament, the former Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan, stated he was concerned to hear that a party of Argentinians had landed in the Falkland Islands and hoisted the Argentinian flag, and something ought to be done about it.
Meanwhile, Sally was concerned about her weight again. She was munching on a chocolate digestive biscuit and reading her March issue of
Cosmopolitan
. The article ‘Are You Twice the Woman Your Husband Married?’ had got her thinking. She read, ‘Are you finding extra inches in all the wrong places?’ and nodded. Fortunately,
Cosmopolitan
had all the answers, with a recommendation to purchase a Black and Decker Home Exerciser, including a Rower at £45 and a Pacer at £40. ‘You can then suggest a second honeymoon’, it went on to say, and Sally selected a custard cream from the biscuit tin and nibbled on it thoughtfully.
‘I’ve just ordered a surprise for Beth,’ I said, eager to share my news.
‘For the wedding?’ asked Anne.
‘Well, not exactly. It’s a washing machine and they’re delivering it on Saturday morning.’
Sally looked up. ‘Was that Beth’s idea?’
‘Yes,’ I said, slightly puzzled.
‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ said Sally and went back to her article.
‘Who’s fitting it?’ asked Anne. ‘John made a real mess of ours – water all over my kitchen floor.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but I’m keen to have it up and running for when Beth gets back on Sunday evening from her course.’
‘Mrs Ackroyd’s husband, Wendell, fits washing machines in his spare time, Mr Sheffield,’ said Vera. ‘You could trust him with the key: he’s perfectly reliable and, unlike his wife, he’s very discreet.’
* * *
After school an idea occurred to me. I parked on the High Street and called into Pratt’s Hardware Emporium. The frayed clothes line in my back garden had seen better days and, as Beth had reminded me, I needed to move with the times.
‘It’s a brand-new, state-of-the-art rotary drier, Mr Sheffield,’ said Timothy Pratt in his monotone voice.
‘It looks perfect, Timothy,’ I said, ‘and I know just where to put it.’
‘It’s a proper space-saver, Mr Sheffield, an’ perfect for the modern ‘ousewife.’
‘Well, actually, Timothy, it’s for me.’
‘An’ then f’Miss ‘Enderson when y’get married, so t’speak,’ added Timothy quickly and anxious not to offend.
‘Is it difficult to put up?’ I asked.
Timothy pondered this for a moment. ‘Well, if y’like, ah could mention it to John Paxton. Ah bet ‘e’d fix it f’you.’
John Paxton was the village odd-job man. ‘Thanks, Timothy,’ I said. ‘I’ll put a whitewash cross on the lawn where I want it erecting and then he can do it when he’s got time.’
‘Fine, Mr Sheffield. Ah’ll keep it ’ere f’now an’ ’e can collect it and do t’job.’
‘Thanks again,’ I said and hurried back to Kirkby Steepleton to try on my seventeenth-century costume.
On Friday morning the pupils in Sally’s class and my class lined up on the cobbled driveway. Sally and all the children, plus half a dozen mothers, looked authentic in their costumes, whereas I got a few strange glances from the parents by the school gate.
‘Who’s Mr Sheffield s’pposed to be?’ whispered Margery Ackroyd to her daughter.
‘Oliver Cromwell,’ said Theresa confidently. ‘We’ve been doing’im in ’istory.’
Margery looked at my bright-red New Wave baggy shirt, punk-rock breeches studded with steel buttons and Status Quo waistcoat. Then she shook her head sadly. ‘Oliver Cromwell must ‘ave been a funny feller,’ she mumbled to herself.
With a farewell wave to Anne, Jo, Vera and the crowd of parents, I boarded William Featherstone’s familiar ancient cream and green Reliance bus, clutching the usual shoe box full of sick-bags. ‘You Can Rely on Reliance’ had been painted in bright-red letters under the rear window. William, in his neatly ironed, brown bus driver’s jacket, white shirt and ex-regimental tie, doffed his peaked cap with old-fashioned charm as we boarded. Then, with parents waving as though they would never see their offspring again, we set off down the High Street.
It was a bright chilly morning as we drove along the A642 on the outskirts of Wakefield and, finally, approached Clarke Hall. It stood frozen in time, a magnificent late-seventeenth-century brick-built gentleman’s farmhouse set in West Yorkshire countryside. With its contemporary and replica furnishings it had become a living-history museum and perfect for a school visit.
Our guides for the day came out in full costume to meet us. ‘I’m Master Benjamin,’ said the bearded man with a cheerful smile, ‘and this is Mistress Bella.’ He looked at me. ‘And this is obviously Oliver Cromwell,’ he said and some of the children giggled. We all walked inside and waited for our instructions. ‘Now, boys and girls,’ said Benjamin, ‘when we talk to each other, we must be polite and we begin by saying, “Prithee, Master Benjamin” or “Prithee, Mistress Bella”,’ he glanced up at me, ‘or “Prithee, Master Oliver”.’ There was another chuckle from the children. I was beginning to tire of my seventeenth-century alter ego.
After we had all practised addressing one another with a bow or a curtsy, Benjamin explained the programme for the day. We were in groups that rotated so that we all had an opportunity to do the various activities. These included preparing vegetables and making soup in the kitchen; going outside to do charcoal drawings of the building and leaded windows; playing a variety of seventeenth-century musical instruments; learning how to use a spinning wheel and being taught a seventeenth-century dance. A parent or teacher was with each group and I began with Bella, who gave us a brief curtsy and beckoned us into the huge kitchen. It was a marvellous experience and I soon forgot that I looked like an extra in
Mutiny on the Bounty
. We prepared our own lunch in huge cooking pots and, while stirring too vigorously, I splashed my shirt with copious amounts of the thick soup. During lunch, little Terry Earnshaw looked up hesitantly and muttered the memorable words, ‘Prithee, Master Benjamin, can ah leave m’carrots?’ and everyone laughed. After that, the day progressed well and, while I was hopeless at the dancing, I enjoyed using the authentic spinning wheel and practising with quill pens.
So it was a tired but happy party that finally arrived back in Ragley as darkness began to fall and I drove home to change. With Beth away there was no incentive to cook for myself, so I drove back to The Royal Oak for a drink and a meal.
When I walked in, the television, on its high shelf above the bar, was droning on unnoticed. It was a programme about Sunday trading and Lady Trumpington in the House of Lords was in full flow. ‘On a Sunday, a mother may buy gin for herself but not powdered milk for her baby, a newspaper from a newsagent but not a Bible from a bookseller; chemists can make up a doctor’s prescription but will not sell you a lipstick!’ Meanwhile, a Woolworth’s store in Slough was about to be prosecuted for announcing its intention to open on a Sunday.