Over Hill And Dale Part 4

"Just listen a moment, will you, Thomas," I said, catching sight of Mrs. Dunn sitting at the back of the room with a self-satisfied smile on her face. She seemed to be quite enjoying my discomfort. "We can perhaps talk about that later on. Now I want us all to look very carefully at this picture of the rabbit. I saw quite a few rabbits this morning asl-'

"My granddad kills them an' all," said Thomas. "He pegs a little string net ower t'rabbit warren holes and lets one of his jills down."

"Jills?" I asked.

"His ferret. He keeps her half fed to make her keen. If he underfeeds her, she eats t'rabbit and won't come up out of t'ole. If he overfeeds her she won't go down at all. He lets her down thole and she chases t'rabbits out into t'net. Then my granddad breaks their necks. He's reight good at that."

"Really," I said feebly. "Well perhaps later on we could hear all about that, Thomas, but for the moment let's look at the picture and think of the shapes and colours in it." I selected the final large photograph of a dormouse and decided on a pre-emptive strike. "And what about dormice, Thomas? Does your granddad kill those as well and hang them up on the fence?"

"No, he quite likes dormice. They don't really do any harm."

Thank goodness for that, I thought. "Right then," I said cheerfully, 'let's all look at this shy little dormouse, clinging to a stalk of wheat. Look carefully at the colour of his fur and his large round eyes which'

"Sheba kills dormice, though," said Thomas in his flat, matter-of-fact voice.

"Sheba?" I sighed.

"Our farm cat. She catches 'em in t'fields, carries 'em into t'kitchen and plays with 'em before killing 'em. We try to get 'em off of'er but she runs off."

"I see," I said wearily.

"And sometimes she brings shrews into t'kitchen an' all, and bites their 'eads off and'

"Is there anyone else who would like to say anything about animals?" I interrupted, in the hope of changing the subject. A small, pixie-faced little boy sitting right under my nose raised his hand eagerly.

"Yes?" I said pleasantly, looking into the keen little face. "What have you to tell me?"

"I've got frogs on my underpants," he announced proudly.

By the end of the morning the children had produced some short, interesting poems about the animals. Most were not about little, soft-furred moles, adorable little dormice, gambolling rabbits or playful squirrels but were blunt, realistic descriptions of the animals that they knew so much about far more than I ever would. They clearly did not need a set of large photographs to prompt them. There were images of 'fierce, sharp-toothed badgers', 'crows which picked at the dead animals on the road', 'fat, black rats that hid in the hay' and 'red foxes creeping behind the hen coop'. Thomas's effort was quite clearly the best: On a frosty morning, my granddad Takes his jill to catch rabbits.

She has a little blue collar and a silver bell, Tiny red eyes and creamy fur, And she trembles in his hands.

"Thomas lives on the farm at the top of the dale," explained Mrs. Dunn as we headed in the direction of the school hall for lunch. She was quite animated and talkative. "Like most farming children, he's been brought up to be unsentimental about animals. They are on the farm for a purpose, not as pets, and any creature which affects their livelihood is regarded as a pest. You should hear what he's got to say about foxes." She paused for a moment before adding, "Thomas has a great deal to say for himself, hasn't he? You might have guessed, Mr. Phinn, he's Oliver's younger brother."

At lunch I sat between Thomas and an angelic-looking little girl. The boy surveyed me for a moment. "Meat and tatey pie for lunch," he said rubbing his hands. "My favourite." He stared at me for a moment. "I reckon you won't be 'having any."

"Why is that?" I asked, intrigued.

"You're probably one of those vegetarians. Me granddad doesn't like vegetarians. He says they take the meat out of his mouth. "There's nothing better than a good bit o' beef on your plate or a nice bit o' pork on your fork." That's what my granddad says. He doesn't like vegetarians, my granddad."

Woe betide any vegetarian foolish enough to cross his granddad's land, I thought to myself. They'd end up, along with the moles and the squirrels, hanging up on t'fence.

Before I could inform Thomas that I was not, in fact, a vegetarian, the little angel sitting next to me whispered shyly, "I like rabbits."

"So do I," I replied.

"My daddy likes rabbits too."

"Does he?"

"And my mummy likes rabbits."

"That's nice."

She took a mouthful of meat and potato pie before adding quietly, "They taste really good with onions."

I am certain that I learnt more from the children that morning at Highcopse Primary School than they did from me. Heading back to the office after lunch, on that bright autumnal afternoon, along the twisting ribbon of road, I came once more upon the swaying box on wheels with the cut-out hand waving "Have a nice day' in the back window. I glanced again at the driver as I overtook. He gave me his shaky wave. I smiled and waved back. I was in such a good mood that had the extremely dirty-looking individual still been at the side of the road intent on getting to York, I might very well have stopped to give him a lift.

Later that afternoon, on my way back from collecting some guideline doc.u.ments from the Print Room, I b.u.mped into George Lapping in a corridor in County Hall.

"h.e.l.lo," he said laconically.

"What are you doing at County Hall, George?" I asked. "I thought you rarely ventured out of Backwatersthwaite."

"I've been dragooned," he said.

"Pardon?"

"Enlisted, press-ganged, selected to sit on one of these advisory committees. I got the sort of invitation you couldn't refuse from the CEO. It's on "Key Skills". Now what do I know about key skills? You're responsible, putting me in the spotlight and encouraging that H MI to visit me. I knew it would happen."

"I meant to give you a ring about the HMI. She's been then, has she?"

"Oh, she's been all right," he replied with a wry chuckle.

"Have you got a minute, George?" I asked him. "Just let's pop into one of the empty committee rooms and you can fill me in."

A moment later George was giving me a blow-by-blow account of the visitation of Miss Winifred de la Mare, H MI.

"For a start," began George, "I didn't remember receiving this letter which she said she sent, saying when she would be coming, so it was a real shock when she arrived on my doorstep. I was walking up the path to the school one morning just before half past eight and, as I always do, I paused to admire the view. Anyway, as I approached the entrance a huge brown creature jumped out at me. It gave me the shock of my life. I thought at first it was a grizzly bear. When I had calmed down a bit, I realised it was, in fact, a large woman in thick brown tweeds, heavy brogues and this hat in the shape of a flowerpot.

' "You were expecting me!" she snaps.

' "Was I?" I replied.

'"Yes!" says she.

' "Oh!" says I. ' "I wrote you a letter," says she.

' "Did you?" says I. ' "Did you not get it?" she asks.

' "I might have," I replied.

' "It was very important," says she.

' "Was it?" says I. ' "Official!" says she. "In a large brown envelope."

' "Really?" says I. ' "The name is de la Mare," says she. "Do you not remember?"

' "Can't say as I do," says I."

As George recounted his meeting with the HMI, it brought back memories of his and my first meeting and the verbal badminton we had played for a good few minutes before he had discovered that I was not the man to fix the guttering but a school inspector. I thought to myself that he might have learnt something from that experience. He clearly had not.

"So what happened?" I asked.

"I told her that I received lots of letters but, because I was a teaching head, I had to deal with correspondence and such when I could find the time. She followed me into the school, peering around her as if it were a museum, declined a cup of tea, plonked herself down on my chair, took the flowerpot off her head and got out this thick wedge of paper from her big black bag.

' "I'm ready to commence," says she.

'"Are you?" says I. ' "I am," says she.

"I pointed out to her that the children had not yet arrived so there was not much point in "commencing" anything, but at nine o'clock after the register she could get started. I asked her if she wanted to begin with the infants and work up or with the juniors and work down.

' "I wish to start with you, Mr. Lapping," she says, fixing me with those gimlet eyes of hers. "I want to discuss the teaching of spelling, grammar and punctuation, approaches to poetry, drama and story writing, standards of literacy, the handwriting policy, reading in the early years and the level of comprehension." It was like an educational shopping list.

'"Hang on, Miss Mare," I says.

'"De la," says she, "it's de la Mare.""

I shut my eyes and groaned inwardly I could guess what was coming.

'"OK, Delia," I says, "I don't have all that information at my fingertips, you know."

Bingo!

' "Well, don't you think you ought to, Mr. Lapping?" says she.

'"What?" says I. ' "Have that information at your fingertips. After all you are the Headteacher!"

"I tried to explain to her that doc.u.ment after doc.u.ment arrived at the school like the plagues of Egypt, that I'd got a broken boiler, faulty pipes, toilets which wouldn't flush, a leaking roof, three children with chicken pox and a member of staff suffering from stress who, having just returned from one of Mr. Clamp's art courses, was ready to chuck herself down a pothole at Hopton Crags.

' "Nevertheless, Mr. Lapping," says she, "it would be helpful to have some information on all these matters."

' "Well, it's a new one to me," says I. "It's the first time in nearly forty years of teaching that the nit nurse has wanted that sort of information from me."

I winced. "You thought she was the school nurse?"

"Well, of course I did. How was I to know she was one of these HMIs? I've only ever met one in the whole of my career and he was an old man in a suit, with a hangdog expression and about as happy as a jockey with haemorrhoids. I was certainly not expecting a strapping great woman in tweeds. I mean, she looked like the nit nurse."

"How did she react?" I hardly dared ask.

"She stared at me for a moment with a sort of glazed expression and then she smiled.

' "Let's start again, Mr. Lapping," she said. "My name is Winifred de la Mare, HMI."

"We got on like a house on fire after that, particularly when she had met the children and read their poetry and stories. She liked what she saw so much she's coming back in the spring."

"I really am delighted," I said. "Maybe I could come out to meet her when she returns?"

"Oh, you'll be meeting her all right, Gervase," George Lapping replied. "She was very interested in the creative writing we were doing, said it was very innovative, so I told her I got the ideas from one of your literacy courses and I suggested that she might care to join you on the next one you direct. Those little gimlet eyes of hers lit up at the thought. She said it was an excellent suggestion and that she will, no doubt, be getting in touch with you."

"Well, thank you very much," I replied.

"You should be very flattered," he told me, with a mischievous ring in his voice. "It's a mark of the excellent in-service you provide that I have recommended you." With that, he made for the door, waved his hand dramatically and departed with the words: "Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them."

There was a witch waiting for me outside the school. The hideous creature had long, knotted black hair which cascaded from beneath a pointed hat, a pale green-tinged face and crimson slit of a mouth, and she was shrouded in a flowing black cape. As I approached, the red-rimmed eyes fixed me with a glare and a long white-fingered hand with sharp red nails reached out like the talon of some great bird of prey and beckoned. The ghastly crone smiled widely to reveal a mouthful of blackened teeth.

"h.e.l.lo, Gervase," she crooned, 'how nice to see you." Before me stood the woman I was pretty sure I loved. Beneath the green and red make-up, the tangle of hair and the cloak of black was Miss Christine Bentley, Headteacher of Winnery Nook Nursery and Infant School. That particular morning I had agreed to visit the school as part of the Children's Reading Day celebrations to take the school a.s.sembly, talk to the children about stories and reading, and judge the compet.i.tion for the best fancy-dressed characters out of literature. I had looked forward immensely to seeing Christine again and, even dressed as a witch, thought she looked wonderful.

I had arrived at the Education Office earlier in the day feeling on top of the world.

"You're looking pretty chipper, Gervase," remarked Sidney as I entered the room, humming.

"I am feeling pretty chipper actually, Sidney," I replied cheerfully.

"Certainly a lot more buoyant than a couple of weeks ago," remarked David, looking up from his papers and removing his spectacles. "I take it you have placated Mrs. Peterson and have dear little Mrs. Dunn eating out of your hand following your latest visit to Highcopse School?"

"Yes, things went well, thank you, David. You were quite right, she is a dedicated teacher and perhaps I was a little hard on her."

"And is the Bride of Frankenstein leaving you in peace?"

"Things have gone blissfully quiet in that direction," I said brightly. "Not a memo or a message or a telephone call all week from Mrs. Savage."

"There's a definite spring in your step," continued Sidney, 'an eagerness in your eye and rather a smug little smile playing about your lips. I could hear you whistling up the stairs like a blackbird with the early morning worm."

"It would hardly be whistling, this blackbird of yours," observed David, putting down his pen, 'if it had a beak full of worms."

"Oh, don't be so pedantic," retorted Sidney. "I didn't say the blackbird had the worm in its beak, did I?"

"Well, where would it have the worm then, if it's not in its beak tucked under its wing? In a shopping basket?"

"Look, the worm is immaterial began Sidney.

"Is this conversation leading anywhere?" I interrupted. I had heard quite enough about worms recently enough to last me a lifetime. Sidney ignored me.

"What I meant, David, is that Gervase looks like the cat that has caught the mouse. Now is that comparison acceptable to you?"

I had heard enough about mice as well. "When you two have quite finished' I attempted to get a word in but had no success.

"Not really," continued David. "That's a cliche, that is. What about: like a proud, powerful lion surveying his jungle kingdom. Much more original, precise and descriptive, don't you think?"

"Now I wonder why our young colleague here is looking so very pleased with himself this bright morning?" remarked Sidney, swivelling around on his chair to face me. "It has rather more to it than having a successful visit to Highcopse School, I'll wager."

"Possibly because today is Children's Reading Day," I suggested, 'and for most of the time I shall be doing what I really enjoy touring schools encouraging children to read."

"Or could it, by any chance, be because you are about to see the woman of your dreams, the Venus of Fettlesham, the Aphrodite of the education world, the delectable Miss Christine Bentley of Winnery Nook Nursery and Infant School?"

"How do you know I am visiting Winnery Nook this morning?"