Mr Leonard

t was 1948. Bob Latham at the classroom door waved his arm, "old Leonard's comin'," and thirty children scrambled into their chairs. Mr Leonard taught English. He usually bustled in at two minutes to nine wielding a huge leather briefcase which he plonked loudly on the table at the front.

A tough-looking little man, not so old at about 45 I guessed, but to us anyone over 30 was ancient.  Especially those without hair. His head was a dome of skin, except for the tufts of black hair lurking around his ears and just above his shirt collar, and the inevitably formal English necktie.

Anyone mistaking him for a professional boxer could be forgiven, for he was burly, pugnacious.  In retrospect, he looked more like a clothing factory manager than a teacher, with huge bushy eyebrows which almost seemed to flutter in the afternoon classroom breeze. The factory manager image was enhanced by the suit he always wore, standard attire for teachers then.

His face was round, bordering on podgy, and big globs of sweat decorated it on rare hot summer days - because of the tie. A left-to-right turning of the bald head to survey the whole class, then momentarily with eyes like a startled cat he focused on us individually. Then he would pick up the attendance book. "Answer your name . . . Smith. . . "Sir" . . . Jackson . . . Barlow. . . Now then you future literary geniuses, let's begin."

The school was in Manchester, England but Mr Leonard was prone to Americanisms and wisecracks.
"Keep your nose clean son," he'd fire at me in a Brooklyn accent. I half-reached for my handkerchief before realising it was just one of his Hollywoodisms. When he said that I always thought of Saturday nights lining up to get in at at the "pictures", and James Cagney with his cigar and  cradled tommy-gun.

Actually when Mr Leonard walked in he was even more Cagney-like because of the hat he wore. We all wondered why Mr Leonard used this vocabulary, since to our inexperienced ears his dialect for the most part was as Mancunian as ours.

My mind was a whirlwind of thoughts. Had he gone to the US as an exchange teacher? Had he grown up in New York before coming to England? Was he ex US Marine Corps? I closed my eyes and half-saw Mr Leonard taking half a dozen Japanese prisoners. Maybe he just watched too many gangster movies.

"How's the business, Bob. OK kid?" he'd often say to the embarrassed, early-rising Robert,who helped on a milk delivery run.

However the reality belied the appearance, and Mr Leonard was instrumental in turning a bunch of 11-year-old ruffians into well-read children, most of whom could write a passable essay and were better-than-average grammarians. We had a different teacher next term but I and the others had a soft spot for "old Leonard."