‘I am indeed. Hard not to with such lovely weather.’
It was indeed a perfect day, blue-skied and warm for May, with the faintest hint of breeze carrying the scent of honeysuckle and early flowering jasmine on the air. Half-term had run late this year, and school wasn’t due to start again for another week, so the unexpected sunshine was an added boon. Max Bingley was thoroughly enjoying his new job as headmaster of St Hilda’s Primary School, and didn’t mind the idea of going back. But nothing could quite beat a week’s walking and fishing in the glorious Downs countryside. Not for the first time, Max said a silent prayer of thanks that he’d had the good sense to take the St Hilda’s job when it was offered to him.
When Harry Hotham, St Hilda’s headmaster of over twenty-five years, unexpectedly announced his retirement last year, and the governors approached Max about the position, he found himself on the receiving end of a relentless campaign by his daughters to accept the job. Max had been depressed since his wife, their mother, had died two years earlier.
‘You need a fresh start, Dad,’ said Rosie, now in her fourth year of medical school at Cambridge. ‘The Swell Valley is supposed to be ridiculously beautiful.’
‘You need a challenge, too,’ chipped in her sister May, already Dr Bingley and now studying for a second PhD in Medieval History in London. ‘Mum would hate to see you wasting away like this. You’re still young.’
‘I’m not young, darling,’ Max smiled, ‘but thank you for saying so.’
‘Well you’re not old,’ said Rosie. ‘More to the point, you’re a wonderful teacher. You have so much more to give professionally. And Fittlescombe’s a lovely village. I went there once for a wedding.’
‘I’m sure it is …’
‘We should at least go and take a look.’
All Max’s objections – he’d never taught in a state school, the pay was awful, he was a rotten administrator – were swatted aside by his daughters like so many pesky, insignificant flies.
‘You should have made head years ago, but you never pushed for it. And where better to make a difference than in a state school? Why should the wealthy kids get all the good teachers? Anyway, St Hilda’s is a charter school so there won’t be that much admin. The governors run it, and they obviously like you and your methods. You’ll have free rein.’
Little by little, Max had been worn down. Then he’d come to Fittlescombe, and walked into the cottage that May and Rosie had already found for him online. Half the size of his present house, Willow Cottage was utterly charming with its flagstone floors, open fires and enchanting sloping garden leading down to the river.
‘Private fishing rights, dad,’ May said with a wink. ‘And you wouldn’t need a mortgage.’
So Max took the job of headmaster at St Hilda’s, more because he lacked the energy to fight than for any positive reason. Now, nearly five months later, things were very different. He was very different. Revived and energized professionally in a way he wouldn’t have believed possible a year ago, he’d already had a profound impact at the school. Not everybody loved his old-fashioned methods – desks in rows, teacher at the front, blackboards and chalk and weekly tests on everything from spelling to times tables to French verbs. But the OFSTED report in March had given the school a glowing review, and if the current Year Six performed as well in their SATs as they had in the Easter mock exams, St Hilda’s had every chance of topping the West Sussex league tables. Quite an achievement for a four-room village primary school with a tiny budget and over thirty children to a class.