The Heart of the Dales (43 page)

‘Indeed there is, Hugo,' said the teacher, ‘but then there is a great deal of sexual language in many of Shakespeare's plays. It appealed to the groundlings, just as smutty humour and suggestive allusions appeal to some people today.' She gave him a long and knowing look. ‘So what was the point you wished to make?'

‘It was just an observation,' replied the boy.

‘Well, thank you for that,' said Mrs Todd. ‘I am most grateful to you for pointing it out, and I am sure that I don't need to spell out all the sexual allusions to you, Hugo, do I, your being a man of the world?' There were a few sniggers from the rest of the class. ‘But if you are unsure about anything, I shall be most happy to explain things.'

‘Of course I know what they mean,' he replied, clearly put out, ‘but –'

‘Was there something else?' asked the teacher.

‘No,' said the boy.

‘Then we can get on,' said Mrs Todd. ‘Perhaps, Hugo, you might like to read on from where we were at the last lesson. Act 1, Scene 5, line 47.'

The boy sighed and read the verse in a sing-song manner:

O! she doth teach the torches to burn bright.

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;

Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!

So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,

As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.

‘Hugo,' said the teacher, in mock-horror, ‘you have the greatest words of love at your disposal and you are reading them like an inventory. I want to hear passion in your voice. Romeo's smitten, he can hardly breathe for love of this beautiful young woman.'

‘Can someone else read it, Mrs Todd,' said the boy, blushing and clearly irritated. ‘I think it's rather soppy.'

‘Self-indulgently sentimental, I think might be a better description if you were making this observation on your examination paper. Examiners do not take kindly to colloquialisms. But, of course, I don't agree with you that this is mawkish. I think the lines are rather beautiful. Perhaps, Hugo,' she said smiling, ‘when you are in love, the words of Romeo might ring true.'

There were more titters from the class.

The boy brooded for much of the lesson but as it neared morning break he thought he would have another salvo. ‘Mrs Todd,' he said, ‘you know you said there is a lot of sexual language in many of Shakespeare's plays.'

‘Yes,' replied the teacher.

‘I've never been quite sure,' he said, nudging the boy next to him, ‘what the difference is between the word “erotic” and the word “kinky”.'

‘Well, perhaps I can explain,' said the teacher, without the
least sign of any embarrassment. ‘Let me see. “Erotic”, I think, comes from the French
érotique
meaning “sexual love”, but “kinky” will have a much more recent provenance. Let me give you an example. To have a long soft ostrich feather brushed enticingly across your cheek by a beautiful woman might be considered erotic. To use the whole ostrich would be, I guess, regarded as kinky. Does that explain?'

‘Yes, miss,' replied the boy sullenly, as the rest of the class burst out laughing.

After the lesson, when I was chatting with Mrs Todd, she said, ‘I think I mentioned on the last occasion we met, Mr Phinn, that I have brought up four boys of my own and know all too well how the adolescent's mind works. I taught for many years in a tough inner-city school, and I have always found that the rebellious and unmanageable boys tend to seek attention by misbehaving or trying to provoke the teacher. There is nothing I haven't seen or heard when it comes to teenagers. Hugo tries it on but he will soon learn that I am not the one to rise to his clever comments.'

‘I thought you handled him very well,' I said. ‘I remember what a thorn in the flesh he was for Mr Frobisher.'

‘I know I might sound uncharitable,' she said, ‘but Mr Frobisher did rather ask for it. I remember the time the school staged the Scottish play. Mr Frobisher, rather puritan in his views, if you recall, tinkered about with the text in case anything should give offence to anyone in the audience. Our colleague, the inestimable Mr Poppleton, was incensed that anyone should have the impertinence to alter Shakespeare but Mr Frobisher carried on regardless, chopping and changing. He told young Hugo, who was playing the part of King Duncan, to adjust the language of his very first line. You may remember, Mr Phinn, that in Macbeth, the King, seeing a survivor of the battle staggering on to the stage, asks his attendants, “What bloody man is that?” Hugo, as directed, changed the line to his own version, “And who's that silly bugger, then?” You can imagine Mr Frobisher's reaction!' She smiled
and shook her head. ‘Hugo will either end up in prison or become a very successful barrister like his father.'

Later that morning, I arrived at Westgarth Primary School. I had visited this school, an ugly, sprawling building enclosed by black iron railings, when I had first started as a school inspector. I had accompanied Harold Yeats, the then Senior Inspector, and we had been mistaken for the men from the Premises and Maintenance Section of the Education Department who were due to come to fix the leak in the boys' toilets.

I had made a return visit to Westgarth School the following year to speak at a parents' meeting and had found the chairman of governors, Mr Parsons, to be an insufferable individual. He was loud, extremely portly, and had a profound sense of his own importance. He had berated me, as I prepared to give my talk, about the decline in educational standards, the lack of discipline and manners in the young and the increase in juvenile crime. I had listened to him wearily.

As I made my way up the path to the school entrance now, to attend the interview panel for a new deputy headteacher, I hoped that Mr Parsons wouldn't be there, but I knew full well he would be, no doubt spouting his outrageous views. I noticed a red sports car parked in the road outside the school, which told me that Dr Gore's representative on the panel, the redoubtable Mrs Savage, had already arrived. This was likely, I thought, to prove a very interesting morning.

I could hear the chairman of governors' loud and abrasive voice at the end of the corridor as I approached the head teacher's room. Taking a deep breath I knocked and entered. There were five people present, four of whom were being lectured by Mr Parsons. The speaker stopped mid-sentence when he saw me. ‘So, if you want my opinion –'

‘Good morning,' I said brightly.

‘Oh,' said Mr Parsons. ‘It's Mr Flynn. We can make a start now you've arrived.' There was the hint of criticism in his voice.

‘Phinn,' I said.

‘What?'

‘It's Mr Phinn,' said Mrs Thornton, the headteacher, moving forward to shake my hand. ‘Thank you for coming.'

Mrs Thornton was dressed in a thick green tweed suit in contrast to the CEO's Personal Assistant who was standing by the window. Mrs Savage was attired in an elegant salmoncoloured dress with a black velvet jacket. She looked as stylish as ever. ‘You know Mrs Savage, of course,' continued the headteacher, ‘but may I introduce two of my governors, Mrs Smethurst and Mrs Curry.' The headteacher gave me a knowing look as she said, ‘And, of course, you've met Mr Parsons.'

‘Well, now we're all here,' said the chairman of governors, ‘shall we make a start? I've a business to run and don't want these interviews dragging on.'

‘I don't think it will take us long,' the headteacher told him. She turned to me. ‘Unfortunately, two of the candidates have pulled out at the last minute so we only have three applicants to consider. I did suggest to Mr Parsons that perhaps we ought to re-advertise –'

‘But I said we should go ahead,' he interrupted. ‘I'm the sort of person who likes to get things done.'

The interviews took place in the school hall. The six of us, with Mr Parsons positioned in the centre, sat in a row at a long trestle table in front of which was a hard-backed chair for the interviewee.

First of all, the candidates' application forms were considered by the governors and the headteacher and, much to my horror when I heard the name, it became clear that the chairman had a preferred choice. Neither Mrs Savage, who was present to record the deliberations and report back to Dr Gore, nor I, who always preferred to wait until I had seen and heard what each applicant had to say, gave an opinion. However, from what I had read on the application form, one of the candidates seemed eminently suitable, another was a strong possibility and the third, Mr Parson's obvious favourite, was quite unsuitable.

I had met Miss Pinkney, the first candidate, when I had
inspected St Catherine's, a school for those with ‘special needs', some two years earlier and had been very impressed by her teaching. I had arrived in the hall to watch a drama lesson, where I had met this larger-than-life, bubbly, middle-aged woman with long hair gathered up in a tortoiseshell comb. She had been dressed in a bright pink and yellow Lycra tracksuit, and I remember thinking at the time that she looked like a huge chunk of Battenberg cake.

‘Come along in, Mr Phinn,' she had boomed. ‘Shoes by the door, jacket on a peg. There's a spare leotard if you want to slip into it.' When she had seen the appalled look on my face, she had added, ‘Only joking!' She had then informed me that her students, all of whom were disabled but ‘very talented', were her ‘stars'. It was transparent that this teacher had a very positive relationship with the children; she was sensitive, encouraging, and good-humoured.

I had met a cheerful and obviously clever young man at St Catherine's whose ambition was to study English at university. Michael, aged sixteen, had been blind since birth but announced when I spoke to him that his blindness was not a ‘handicap' nor a ‘disability'; it was ‘more of an inconvenience' and that if sighted people like myself were a little more considerate and put things back in their proper place, then he wouldn't bang into them. I had learnt to read Braille when I had studied for a teaching diploma but had become very rusty and Michael had been most amused at my miserable efforts to decipher the dots on the page.

‘Not the world's best reader,' he had told me, good naturedly. ‘I think you need to brush up on your Braille, Mr Phinn.'

He'd had no problems, of course, reading the text and his fingers had moved across the page at a remarkable speed.

‘You're a pretty important person, aren't you?' Michael had told me.

‘Not really.'

‘Yes, you are,' he had said. ‘The atmosphere in the school since the teachers knew you were coming has been manic.
You write a report about the school and how things can be improved and the teachers have to do it.' He waited for a response but when I didn't reply, he added, ‘Well, don't they?'

‘I suppose that's how it's supposed to work,' I had told him. ‘So what improvements would you recommend?'

‘Not many,' he'd said. ‘It's a good school. There's not much wrong with it.' The boy had thought for a moment and then added, ‘The library could do with more good-quality books in Braille and Moon.'

‘Moon?'

‘Moon is an easier alternative to Braille,' he had explained. ‘It was invented by Dr William Moon back in 1854. I'm surprised you've not heard of it, you being a school inspector. Braille is a better system in lots of ways but Moon is pretty good for kids who can't manage Braille. You ought to look at it. You see, someone with a visual impairment is likely to be behind in his or her reading and they need really good material to get them turned on to books. It's awfully expensive to convert a book into Braille so lots of books aren't available.'

‘I will certainly take that on board when I write my report,' I had told him. ‘So tell me, Michael, what is the best thing about St Catherine's?'

‘That's easy,' he had replied without a moment's hesitation. ‘Miss Pinkney.'

That same Miss Pinkney now entered the hall for her interview like a seasoned actress coming on stage. The door was thrown open and she made a grand entrance, dressed in a multicoloured smock of a dress, red leather sandals and a rope of enormous amber-coloured beads.

‘Good morning to you all,' she said in a deep, resonant voice. She approached the chair, her sandals making a slapping sound on the wooden floor. ‘May I sit?' Without waiting for an answer, she plonked herself down and smiled widely at the panel.

The interview went very well for Miss Pinkney. She answered the questions fully and confidently, and it was clear that she was a highly-committed and enthusiastic teacher with
the experience, expertise and the force of character to be a first-rate deputy headteacher. When Mr Parsons climbed on his hobbyhorse about decline in standards, poor behaviour in the young and lack of discipline, she challenged him.

‘My goodness,' she chortled, ‘you do sound so dreadfully pessimistic. The picture is not quite as bad as you paint it, you know, and I speak from working with children for many years. On the whole, I have to say that I am very impressed by the youth of today. I love working with them and I have a great deal of faith in them. I know there are the awkward and the demanding and, on occasions, the repellent youngsters who are hard to cope with, and it is always these who seem to get into the newspapers, but there are many many children who come from caring, supportive homes and are in the hands of dedicated and talented teachers.'

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mrs Thornton beside me nodding. She was obviously impressed with what she was hearing.

The chairman of governors grunted. ‘Mr Phinn,' he said, ‘would you like to say something?'

‘What do you think are the keys to educational success?' I asked her.

Miss Pinkney answered without a moment's thought. ‘Great expectation and high self-esteem.' She clasped her hands in front of her, displaying a set of large coloured rings. ‘Shall I go on?'