‘I know, Mr Sparshott, I know. The thing is, you see, as it’s there so’s they can bury the rubbish as it comes along.’
‘Then why can’t they go ahead and bury it? It’s an eyesore, I tell you. The headmaster was complaining about it after he took the morning assembly at the end of last term. From the platform, him and the staff have to look straight out of them big winders in the hall on to what looks like sommat as was left over from the blitz.’
‘I know, Mr Sparshott, but till they’ve done with making a mess there’s not much point in clearing of it up. They’re all union men, and if I was to order ’em to bury all that rubbish and fill in the hole, I’d have big trouble on my hands. There’s bound to be more rubbish before we’ve done, you see, and that ’ud mean digging another hole. They simply wouldn’t do it, Mr Sparshott, not nohow.’
‘There’s another thing the headmaster wants to know. When is that back entrance going to be finished? Till them back doors is on and I can lock the school up secure come the night, nothing ain’t safe from looters. As it is, youngsters gets in over the fence that’s round the field and plays merry hell. They let all the school chickens out over Christmas, blast ’em!’
Although in his uniformed days he had had only a modest function in a village some thirty miles out of the town in which the new school was being built, Sparshott was a conscientious man trained to accept responsibility. He was keenly aware that the school building housed a large quantity of valuable material, and the fact that he could not lock the back doors worried him.
Evening classes used the school on three nights a week, so there were twenty brand-new typewriters in the commercial room. The school also possessed radio and television sets, and there were expensive tools in the woodwork centre and all kinds of sports equipment in the large cupboard in the gym. There was another cupboard in the library where the school orchestra usually kept its brass instruments, its strings, its woodwind and the tympani whose clangings, reverberations and boomings were so dear to their operators’ hearts.
When Sparshott pressed his point, he was fobbed off again.
‘Well, you see,’ said the foreman, ‘until we’ve finished with that there end of the building, there ain’t no point in putting in them doors. Only be a hindrance to us, like, till we get that ten-foot drop from the library floor cased in. Nobody excepting my lads don’t know as that end of the school is open all the time, and I can trust my lads. They won’t come back after hours nor touch anything as don’t belong to ’em.’
Sparshott would like to have mentioned the complaints he had had from masters whose form rooms were at the back of the building, so that unceasing vigilance had to be exercised to make sure that venturesome boys did not fall down the ten-foot drop, but he realised that complaints would be useless. Neither was there any way of stopping young workmen from singing, whistling, shouting to one another and, worse than this, using their concrete mixer during school hours. He had contrived, with the assistance of the headmaster and the PE specialist, to stop the kicking of footballs against classroom walls during the workmen’s tea breaks, but that was his only victory.
Fortunately for the headmaster and his secretary, their offices were at the front of the building and this had been finished for some time. So far as the ten-foot drop was concerned, there had been no casualties so far, although the headmaster had lost hours of sleep brooding upon the dangers, boys being what they are.
The caretaker had not reported the incident of the chickens, deeming it the work of naughty little junior-school boys and not worthy of Mr Ronsonby’s attention, but there had been another matter which Sparshott felt did call for official notice. On the Friday when the school had broken up for the Christmas vacation he had gone on his rounds as usual to make sure that the cleaners were doing their job and that all the masters were off the premises. He was somewhat surprised to find Mr Pythias still in the staffroom.
‘Sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘I thought as everybody had gone.’
‘Got one or two things to finish off. Shan’t be long,’ said Mr Pythias. ‘Thank goodness for these dark December evenings! At least the workmen have to give up early. Only time one can get a bit of peace in this place.’
Sparshott made another round of the school half an hour later, ascertained that the staffroom was now empty, and turned off one or two lights which had been left on in the corridors. He then paid the cleaners their weekly wage, saw them off the premises and locked the double gates at the end of the drive and the two side-gates by which pedestrians came in. This done, he went back to his cottage to have his tea.
As Mr Pythias had indicated, the workmen had left, that evening, as soon as it was too dark for outside work to be carried on, so all that the caretaker planned to do was to make his final round as soon as he had heard the nine o’clock news. After that it was to be supper and bed.
Sparshott liked Friday nights. There were no evening classes, so he knew that he could ‘shut shop’ as soon as the last of the staff (usually the school secretary) had gone and then, apart from making his rounds accompanied by his dog, and except for unlocking the gates for the Saturday morning overtime workmen and the football team if the boys had a home match, the weekend was a period of blessed peace and quiet. On this particular Friday which ended the term, there were not even the school clubs to consider.
There was only one snag. During the summer evenings and on Saturday afternoons, he had to be on the alert to chase away small boys from the local primary school who climbed the fence round the playing field and came to play unlawful cricket or football on the school grass. The great gates and their side gates looked impressive and could not easily be scaled. In any case, they were in full view of the street. The field, however, was bordered on two sides by the back gardens of houses, and these gardens had back alleys which were a free-for-all and a passport to the school fence which any active youngster could scramble over with the help of his mates.
Young Sparshott, who was just sixteen years old and in the fifth form, said to his father after one of the caretaker’s skirmishes with these infant trespassers, ‘What harm do they do, dad? They’ve got nothing but a bit of asphalt playground at their school. They can’t hurt the field just kicking a ball about, can they?’
‘They don’t stop at just kicking a ball about, son. Before the front of the school was finished and a proper coal shoot made, we used to have a whole mountain of coke shot on to the ground where the gym was to be built, and these little scaramouches used to run up and down it and reduce a lot of it to powder. Then there’s all the stuff the builders leave about. I got a responsibility for that. The kids can have all they want of the field when they’re old enough to be transferred to school here, same as you was. Until then, I reckon I’ve got to keep on the kee veevee and look after the school’s interests.’
‘Well, everything will be quiet enough while we’re away over Christmas,’ said his wife on that particular Friday evening while she was giving him his tea.
‘Christmas don’t last all that long and the builder’s men will be in again after Boxing Day,’ said Sparshott. ‘There’s no peace for the wicked, meaning me, love.’
‘We’ve got to be thankful for small mercies. We’re living rent-free and your money is good. Once the workmen clear off, we shan’t know ourselves.’
‘They don’t seem in any hurry to get finished. There’s still plenty to do out the back and the quad’s a shambles. There used to be some sort of stone-built shack there before the school got the property, and all the builder has done is to pull the shack down and leave all the mess.’