The Heart of the Dales (11 page)

I poked my head up through the hatch but I saw nothing in the torch's beam except the black water tank and a few large cardboard boxes that we used for storage. The rest of the loft was dark and dusty. I hardly expected the creature, whatever it was, to be waiting to wave at me. It was probably in some darkcorner, watching me at that very moment, but not moving an inch.

After my unsuccessful sortie, I found Christine sitting in the kitchen, feeding Richard. ‘Well?' she asked nervously.

‘I can't see anything,' I told her, ‘but I'll have another look in the morning when it's light.'

‘What about giving Mr Hinderwell a call?' suggested Christine.

Maurice Hinderwell was the County Pest Control Officer whom I had met the previous year when visiting one of the county's schools. He was a strange little man, not unlike the rodents he caught and killed, with dark inquisitive eyes, small pointed nose, protuberant white teeth and glossy black hair bristling on his scalp. The school had had a nest of rats, which he had disposed of in quick time and with a great degree of relish. When rats appeared in the garden of Peewit Cottage, I had called on his services and since then not a rat had been seen. Now, it seemed, there was a strong possibility that a rat had returned and was in the house.

‘I'll call him in the morning,' I said.

As soon as I was back in bed with Christine snuggled up beside me and the baby in his carrycot beside us, the noise started again in earnest. Added to the scratching and scraping, there was now the noise of tiny feet racing up and down above us.

‘Sounds as though he is preparing for the Rat Olympics,' I commented unwisely.

Christine gave a muffled shriek. ‘I'm going to my parents in the morning,' she said, ‘and not coming back until you've got rid of it.'

As soon as it was light, I climbed the ladder to the loft, armed with a poker. I pushed my head charily through the hatch and saw our nocturnal visitor. Sitting on its haunches and staring at me with large black eyes was a grey squirrel. I could also see how it had got into the loft – light was coming through a hole in the corner where a slate had come loose.

‘It's a squirrel,' I called down to Christine. ‘A cute, little bushy-tailed squirrel. He's getting in through a hole under the eaves.'

I could hear the relief in Christine's voice. ‘Well, I'm glad
it's not a rat,' she said, ‘but I still don't want a squirrel, however cute, taking up residence.'

A moment later, I came down from the loft. ‘Well, he'll not be back,' I said. ‘I've blocked up his entrance and that should stop him getting in. That's the end of our little visitor.'

Would that had been the case! As it turned out, the squirrel became yet another item on my list of problems.

The following day, Friday, was the day of the first meeting of the new autumn term of the team of inspectors. I wanted to get to the Staff Development Centre before my colleagues to discuss the situation at Ugglemattersby Junior School with Winifred de la Mare, the Chief Inspector.

I had been so looking forward to the start of the new term and little expected that in the very first school that I would visit there would be a problem, and what was likely to be a major one at that. After we had moved downstairs to our new office we had had a week before schools went back, during which time I had planned all my forthcoming courses, worked out a timetable of school visits, and had organised support materials for teachers, and had then sat back in my chair the Friday before the start of the new school year feeling rather smug. I should have recalled the cautionary advice of one of my colleagues.

David Pritchard, the small, good-humoured Welshman responsible for Mathematics, PE and Games, had once warned me against the danger of becoming too complacent. In his sonorous, lugubrious Welsh valley voice he had told me that when things seem to be going swimmingly, disaster generally strikes – like someone poking a great stick through the spokes of your bicycle when you are least expecting it, with the result that you are over the handlebars and flat on your face. After my visit to Ugglemattersby Junior School I felt decidedly prone.

The child's innocent question at that school, ‘What are you for?' had stayed firmly in my mind. What
was
I for? It was clear to me that my function was to help improve the education of the young in the county by observing, recording, reporting
and advising head teachers and teachers. It appeared I had not been very successful in the case of the Junior School and I guessed that the Chief Inspector would have something pretty sharp to say when she found out.

Winifred de la Mare had only been in post for a term, having taken over from the previous Senior Inspector, Dr Harold Yeats, an easy-going, tolerant, gentle giant of a man. Harold, ever optimistic, phlegmatic and of a kindly disposition, avoided confrontation and had been a delight to work with. Our new boss was a very different character altogether: extremely efficient, clear-sighted, frighteningly intelligent and, for anyone foolish enough to take her on, a formidable adversary. She did not suffer fools gladly and expected the highest professional standards and a great deal of hard work from her colleagues. Years of experience as a highly-respected and senior member of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools, had prepared her well for the ups and downs of this new appointment and she was fully equipped to deal with difficult head teachers, unpredictable colleagues, well-meaning Chief Education Officers who liked to delegate, and demanding and frequently interfering elected members of the Education Committee on the County Council.

When that Committee had proposed the closure of a number of small schools, two of which were not only greatly valued by the small communities they served but also produced more than adequate results, Miss de la Mare had marshalled the facts, come out fighting and had persuaded the councillors to scrap the idea. I was greatly relieved and very grateful to her for one of the schools on the list for closure had been Hawksrill, the school which my own child would one day attend. Miss de la Mare spoke her mind, fought her corner and got things done but she was also good humoured, supportive and was someone for whom we inspectors had a great deal of respect.

Since she had taken up her post at the beginning of the previous term, there had been many changes and all for the better. A month after she had arrived, Miss de la Mare had emerged from the Chief Education Officer's room at County
Hall with the new title of Chief Inspector and the promise that all the inspectors' salary scales would be re-negotiated. Julie, the inspectors' clerk, had soon after been promoted and re-designated inspectors' secretary: that was no change so far as we were concerned since we had always called her ‘secretary'. She had now been promised extra clerical help. She would no longer have to type all the school reports, which had occupied so much of her time, but send them to the central typing pool at County Hall. But the major change, of course, had been the move downstairs of the inspectors' office. No longer were the four of us in a cramped and cluttered office, but in a much more spacious and newly refurbished area on the ground floor, formerly occupied by the school psychologists. Julie had been up-graded from her broom cupboard to a still small but light and airy room. Yes, indeed, Miss Winifred de la Mare had certainly got things done. As I drove into the Staff Development Centre that September morning I wondered just what she would do about me.

The Staff Development Centre, where all the courses and conferences for teachers and most of the staff meetings and interviews took place, had once been a secondary modern school. The former playground area was now the car park, the biggest classrooms and the hall had been adapted for lectures and courses, and the smaller rooms had been converted into meeting rooms and resource centres. There was a small staff room, reference library, well-equipped kitchen, spacious lounge area and office. The SDC was as a good school should be – bright, cheerful and welcoming and, above all, spotlessly clean and orderly. This was as a result of the industry and devotion of the caretaker, Connie, who kept the building, inside and out, immaculate.

Connie was a colourful and assertive character – a warm-hearted, down-to-earth Yorkshire woman who had no understanding whatsoever of rank, status or social standing in the world. She was severally known by Sidney Clamp as ‘that virago with the feather duster', ‘the tyrant with the teapot', ‘the caretaker from hell', ‘the termagant in pink', ‘the despot
with the stepladders' and various other assorted cognomens. Everyone who drove through the gates or crossed the threshold of her domain, be it Dr Brian Gore, our esteemed Chief Education Officer, or the humble man who arrived to empty the dustbins, was greeted with the same uncompromising forthright manner, usually with the words, ‘I hope you've parked your vehicle in the correct specificated areas and not blocked my entrance.'

Connie had a delightfully eccentric command of the English language. She was a mistress of the malapropism and a skilled practitioner of the
non sequitur
. For Connie, English was not a dull and dreary business, it was something to twist and play with, distort, invent and re-interpret. She could mangle words like a mincer shredding meat.

She had a somewhat explosive relationship with Sidney who, being loud, expressive, untidy and larger than life, was a person guaranteed to cross swords with her. She once vowed ‘to take the bull between the horns' and tackle Sidney (who she described as ‘a wolf in cheap clothing') once and for all. ‘The mess that man leaves behind,' she frequently complained, ‘with all his artificated courses. I'm sick and tired of clearing up after him. He leaves a trail of debris and destruction wherever he goes.' Once when she had returned to work after being ‘in bed with her back' – the result of moving large bags of clay Sidney had left after his pottery course – Connie had announced that because of Mr Clamp she had been ‘under a psychopath for a week'.

On another occasion, when some teachers complained that they couldn't hear one of the speakers who was delivering a lecture in the main hall, she agreed that the ‘agnostics' were not too good in that particular room.

Such a character, positioned at the entrance to the Centre, with her copper-coloured perm, attired in a brilliant pink nylon overall and holding a feather duster like a field marshal with his baton ready to do battle, could be quite unnerving for visitors. Teachers attending courses at the SDC, seeing Connie's set expression, which could freeze soup in cans, and
the small sharp eyes watching their every movement, would creep past her like naughty schoolchildren. After the coffee break they would dutifully return their cups to the serving hatch under Connie's watchful stare, and they'd leave the cloakrooms in the pristine condition in which they had found them. At the end of their lectures, visiting speakers would ensure that the equipment they had used was neatly put away, the chairs carefully stacked, the rooms left in an orderly fashion, litter placed in the appropriate receptacles and all crockery returned to the kitchen. She had been known to pursue offenders into the car park and berate them if they did not leave the room exactly as they had found it.

On this damp, dreary September morning, Connie was standing at the entrance in her familiar pose as I entered the Centre. Under her scrutinising eye, I thoroughly wiped my feet on the mat and closed the door without banging it.

‘Oh, it's you, is it?' she said. No ‘Good morning, Mr Phinn, have you had a nice holiday?' No, ‘Hello, and how are you?' Just ‘Oh, it's you, is it?' was all I was going to get.

‘Good morning, Connie,' I replied, trying to sound cheerful.

‘You're early. The meeting doesn't start till eight thirty. I've only just put the tea urn on.'

‘I was hoping to see Miss de la Mare before the start,' I told her. ‘Has she arrived yet?'

‘She's in Meeting Room One, rootling through a pile of papers,' Connie replied. ‘The amount of paperwork you lot get through! Acres of Amazon rain forests must get chopped down every week to keep you inspectors in paper. There's such a thing as conservatism, you know. I suppose you'll be wanting a cup of coffee?'

‘That would be splendid,' I said.

‘I've only got the ordinary kind,' she said, staring at me fiercely as if expecting some sort of confrontation. ‘Not that decaffeinicated stuff.'

‘That's fine,' I replied.

‘I had a head teacher in here last term asking for “proper” coffee. “And what's proper coffee when it's at home?” I asked
her. “Proper ground coffee,” she said, “that you get in one of those caf… er, cath… um, catheters.”'

‘Cafetière,' I murmured.

‘What?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Any road, I said to her, “I don't serve anything fancy, just ordinary instant coffee out of a jar not out of an er… um… and you can like it or lump it.”'

‘Well, I would like it, Connie,' I told her, ‘just so long as it's hot and wet.'

‘Just as well,' she told me, mollified, ‘because that's all I've got. I'll go and put the kettle on. Oh, before I go, I've told Miss de la Mare that we've got painters and decorators in the Centre next week and to remind you inspectors at your meeting that some of the rooms will be unavailable and there'll be a lot of wet paint about. If Mr Clamp thinks he can swan into the Centre without a by-your-leave and arrange courses without booking a room, as he's accustomised to do, then he's got another think coming.'

‘I'll remind them,' I told her.

‘The last thing I want is decorators messing the place up, leaving paint all over the floor, putting marks on my walls, moving my stepladders. I shall be keeping a close eye on them, you can be sure of that.'

Oh yes, I thought to myself, as she strode off in the direction of the kitchen, flicking her feather duster along the walls and across the top of the bookshelves as she went, I can be sure of that and no mistake.