The Heart of the Dales by Gervase Phinn

Author:Gervase Phinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2007-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

15

The Chief Education officer’s headquarters, a large oakpanelled room in the main building at County Hall, smelt of lavender furniture polish and seasoned wood. It was a sumptuous room with a thick-pile maroon carpet, heavy mahogany chairs upholstered in dark green simulated leather with the county crest emblazoned in gold on their backs. Glass-fronted bookcases stocked with red leather-bound tomes lined one wall, and framed paintings by some of the county’s most talented children were displayed on the other. A large picture window looked out over Fettlesham and up to the moors beyond.

The Chief Education officer for the county of Yorkshire sat at a huge partners’ desk set in the middle of the room, resting his elbows on the highly-polished surface and steepling his fingers before him. Dr Gore was a tall man with deep-set, earnest eyes and the unabashed gaze of one who knows his position in the world. Next to him, straight-backed and severe, sat his Personal Assistant, the redoubtable Mrs Brenda Savage, dressed in an expensive dark tailored suit with small gold buttons, a lilac silk scarf at her throat and wearing an assortment of expensive-looking jewellery. As always she looked immaculate.

‘Do sit down, will you, Gervase,’ said Dr Gore, indicating a chair facing his desk. ‘Thank you for coming to see me. I know how very busy you are, especially at this time of the year.’

‘As indeed we all are, Dr Gore,’ observed Mrs Savage, cocking her head in a somewhat arrogant fashion.

‘Quite,’ said the CEO, nodding and giving her a cursory glance. ‘Now, Gervase, I have a little job for you.’

I might have guessed as much, I thought to myself. Over the four years I had been a school inspector in the county, I had been summoned to ‘the holy of holies’, as Julie termed the CEO’s office, about nine or ten times and on every occasion I had left the room with one of Dr Gore’s ‘little jobs’. I had been asked to conduct a countywide reading survey, undertake an audit of the secondary school libraries, investigate standards of spelling, chair working parties, accompany members of the Education Committee, foreign inspectors and important visitors around schools, compile discussion papers and organise a poetry festival. And they were never ever ‘little jobs’.

‘I have had a word with Miss de la Mare,’ continued the CEO, unsteepling his fingers and tilting back in his large swivel chair, ‘and she agrees with me that you are the person best placed to take on this particular little job.’ He smiled like a basking shark and fixed me with the dark, heavy-lidded eyes. ‘Strictly speaking, it doesn’t fall into your bailiwick, but you have had the experience of organising conferences and events and such – very successfully, too, I may add. I am sure that this little job will not take up too much of your time. Mrs Savage will, of course, be working closely with you to deal with all the administration and to keep me fully informed of developments.

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