Saving Miss Mirabelle

by Anne Fine

  She’d look astonished, as if it were not possible that she was really still sitting here in the classroom, with so many children around her. ‘Sorry. I must have been miles away. I was having a daydream.’

  And Mrs Spicer would close the door with a fierce little bang, to let Miss Mirabelle know that a classroom was no place for a daydream.

  But Miss Mirabelle wasn’t the only one to suffer from daydreams. Lance spent hours staring into space, wondering how he could protect Miss Mirabelle from danger. He suspected Mrs Spicer of spending her days locked in her office secretly writing letters of complaint about Miss Mirabelle to important people.

  Dear Head of the Governors,

  Miss Mirabelle does not fit in at Wallisdean Park School. She hasn’t the right attitude. Her clothes are too fancy, and her heels are too high. She spends far too much time staring out of the window, and holds eye-squelching sessions when she is bored.

  On her very own admission, sniffers bring out the murderess in her. I think she ought to go.

  Yours truly,

  Emily Spicer

  Lost in his daydreams, Lance thought what he’d do. He’d run like the very wind down to the meadow, where Flossie would be standing, her head lowered, cropping the fresh juicy grasses.

  But Flossie was strangely altered in his daydream. Her legs and neck were longer. Her body was nowhere near as bulky as usual. Muscles rippled beneath her glossy skin. Her head was a different shape.

  Only the lovely velvet-brown eyes remained the same. The rest of Flossie had become a beautiful and fleet-footed horse who whinnied with excitement and promised adventure.

  Lance would scale the fence. Flossie would prance closer. Lance would make a flying leap on to her back, and she would clear the fence with a jump so high and wide and smooth and effortless, it was like flying.

  He’d clutch her silken mane as they gathered speed along the country lane. Her delicate hooves would clatter as they spun along. Her tail would fly out behind.

  But Mrs Spicer would be almost at the letterbox, her tell-tale letter in her outstretched hand. Would they be in time to rescue Miss Mirabelle?

  Yes! Quicker than lightning can flash, Flossie would canter through. Hanging on to her mane for dearest life, Lance would lean down, and, reaching out, snatch the offending letter from the old dragon’s hand.

  ‘You shan’t get rid of Miss Mirabelle!’ he’d cry bravely. ‘I shall save her!’

  And ripping the mean little letter into a thousand pieces, he’d scatter it to the four winds as they rode home.

  If only life itself were that simple! The weeks of term went by. Everyone’s workbook filled up, and everyone moved on to a different-coloured reader. Miss Mirabelle certainly made them all work. But still Lance couldn’t help worrying about her. It seemed to him that he couldn’t walk down a corridor without seeing Mrs Spicer purse her lips, or raise her eyebrows, or give a cold little look of disapproval as the amazing Miss Mirabelle sailed by.

  ‘It’s getting worse,’ he warned Flossie gloomily. ‘Mrs Spicer is definitely out to get her. You wait and see.’

  And Flossie didn’t have to wait long. It wasn’t more than another week before Lance came home from school one day dragging his feet, with his head hanging.

  Flossie picked her way through the mud in the ditch and stuck her head over the wooden fence to greet him.

  Lance took no notice. He just kept walking.

  Flossie let out a loud, long, plaintive moo.

  Lance turned and, noticing Flossie for the first time that afternoon, hurried back to climb the fence and slide his arms around her neck.

  ‘Oh, Flossie!’ he said. ‘Guess what has happened.’

  Flossie looked anxious.

  ‘Miss Mirabelle has been so silly. She’s in big trouble.’

  Flossie pulled a hoof out of the mud with a great sucking sound, then put it back in exactly the same place.

  Lance explained.

  ‘You see, it’s nearly the Summer Fair, when each class does something special to make a bit of money.’

  Flossie tilted her head.

  ‘People from other classes keep coming up to us,’ explained Lance, ‘and asking, “What is your class doing this year?”’

  He looked dismayed.

  ‘And we can’t answer.’

  He spread his hands.

  ‘Miss Mirabelle won’t choose,’ he told Flossie. ‘She won’t admit it, but I think she thinks the whole idea of making money is boring. She’s very easily bored. So she keeps putting off the decision. We never choose.’

  He patted Flossie on the neck, more to comfort himself than to comfort the cow.

  ‘Everyone else chose weeks ago,’ he said. ‘Class One is going to run a little Bring and Buy stall. Class Two is putting on a show in the hall. Class Three has organised a sponsored run. Even the Infants are making Spaceman Snoopy collecting boxes out of old toilet roll holders and bits of tinfoil.’

  He paused, sunk in gloom.

  ‘And we’ve done nothing!’

  Flossie rubbed her massive head against the fence. Clouds of dust flew up in Lance’s face, but he was so preoccupied he didn’t notice.

  ‘And that’s not the worst of it,’ he told Flossie. ‘Mrs Spicer has been popping in every day to ask Miss Mirabelle, “Have you decided yet?” And Miss Mirabelle just keeps answering, “No, not quite yet.” You can tell Mrs Spicer is getting terribly suspicious. You see, she doesn’t like Miss Mirabelle’s attitude.’

  He shook his head. Flossie shook hers.

  ‘And this morning,’ he told Flossie, ‘Mrs Spicer lost her patience and stormed into our room. You could tell she was on the war-path. She asked Miss Mirabelle again.’

  Flossie’s huge, loving, brown eyes were melting.

  ‘And Miss Mirabelle panicked, and told a lie! “Oh, yes,” she said. “That’s all fixed up now.”’

  Flossie blinked twice.

  ‘Quite,’ agreed Lance. ‘A bare-faced lie! And Mrs Spicer didn’t believe it, either. She saw us all sitting with our mouths open, and she asked Miss Mirabelle, as sweet as sugared poison, “And may I ask what, exactly, your class has decided to do?”’

  Lance’s face paled as he told his dear Flossie the worst of it.

  ‘And Miss Mirabelle replied, “I’m afraid I can’t tell you, Mrs Spicer. You see, it’s a secret.”’

  Flossie let out a soft bellow of amazement.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Lance. ‘Miss Mirabelle told a giant whopper. She has no secret plan. She can’t have. She doesn’t have a plan at all!’

  He slid down from the fence on Flossie’s side, to take the shortcut home across the meadow.

  ‘And with only just over a week left, she’s not very likely to think of one, is she?’ he added bitterly.

  Shades of the terrifying Mr Rushman and the boring Mrs Maloney rose up to haunt him. Perhaps even the dreaded Mr Hubert’s broken legs had healed by now.

  ‘We have to save her, Flossie!’ he announced. ‘We must save Miss Mirabelle from the dragon Spicer!’

  On his way home, absorbed by anxiety and gloom, he put his foot right in a pancake.

  3

  In which the terrible, terrible secret hangs heavily over all

  Miss Mirabelle came into school next morning in the worst mood. The clattering of her high heels coming closer down the corridor sounded as dangerous as machinegun fire. She slammed the door shut behind her, hurled her capacious woven bag on to her desk, then put her hands on her hips.

  She glowered round the class.

  ‘Start thinking about this Summer Fair,’ she told them.

  Start thinking? What a cheek! Lance practically needed two matchsticks to keep his eyes propped open. He was exhausted. Start thinking? He’d been lying awake thinking all night!

  ‘I thought you already had a plan,’ Deborah said, mystified. ‘You told Mrs Spicer it was all fixed up. You said it was a secret.’

  The faintest blush rose on Miss Mirabelle’
s cheeks.

  ‘I did have a bit of an idea,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘And, at the time, it seemed better to keep it a secret. But it wasn’t much of an idea. And now I’ve forgotten it.’

  She glanced round, as though daring them not to believe her.

  ‘At least we’ve still got a secret,’ giggled Deborah. ‘It is a secret that we’ve got no plan.’

  Miss Mirabelle wasn’t amused. Sinking on to her chair, she buried her head in her hands.

  ‘Oh, it’s certainly a secret: a terrible, terrible secret. It’s been hanging over me all night.’

  And me, Lance thought privately.

  Miss Mirabelle raised her head.

  ‘Think,’ she told all of them. ‘We don’t have much time. Think very hard.’

  They all sat thinking hard. Every few minutes someone would shoot up a hand and make a suggestion. But no one came up with an idea Lance hadn’t already thought of, and given up, because it was impossible –

  ‘We could hire elephants from the zoo!’

  Or another class was already doing it –

  ‘We could put on a little show in the hall!’

  Or it would take more than a week to organise –

  ‘We could invite somebody famous, and sell tickets!’

  The ideas were all hopeless. Miss Mirabelle got more and more miserable. She reached in her capacious woven bag and took out her little pearl knife and an apple. For the first time ever her hands shook a little as she peeled, so that her usual perfect coil fell off in ragged chunks.

  The class watched silently. They’d seen Miss Mirabelle bored, and they’d seen her cross-patch. They’d never seen her rattled. It made them nervous.

  ‘Surely,’ she kept saying, ‘one of you can think of something.’

  It seemed to Lance that she was looking directly at him.

  But no one could think of anything. The morning went from bad to worse. Miss Mirabelle fell into an even blacker mood. She was snapping at people for everything they did, then snapping at them for not doing anything. And she threatened Deborah with the cupboard for just breathing loudly, nothing like sniffing at all! After a bit Lance found himself beginning to wonder whether Miss Mirabelle deserved to be rescued. It was her own fault, after all. She should never have wasted all that time staring out of the window, or told that foolish Giant Whopper.

  But he couldn’t help wanting to help her, all the same. She was still the amazing Miss Mirabelle. She stood there in her brilliant yellow dress with golden sunflowers sewn on with gleaming beads. She was so exotic, so different (and so much of an improvement on Mr Rushman and Mrs Maloney, and the dreadful Mr Hubert). He couldn’t help wanting to save her. He knew what school could be like.

  And her black mood did not last long.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, after a while. ‘Worrying is so boring. Let’s have a change. Let’s do some painting. You can all think while you paint, and we’ll do our work later.’

  She went to the cupboard and wheeled out the trolley with all the art supplies.

  Lance took his sheet of paper and a brush. Flattening the paper in front of him, he stabbed his paintbrush into the first paint pot Miss Mirabelle handed him and took a look. It was bright green.

  Without thinking, he swept his brush over the paper. And again . . . And again . . . The green was very green. It was like grass after a week of sun and showers. Lance drifted gently off into a daydream. Together, he and Flossie were pounding over the lush green grass of the meadow. They were off on an adventure – crossing the world to right wrongs, kill dragons, rescue damsels in distress.

  He was paying no attention at all to his painting. He didn’t even bother to change colours. He just kept sticking his brush into the pot in front of him. Gradually the whole sheet of paper was filling up green.

  Just as he was imagining sweeping Miss Mirabelle up beside him on Flossie’s strong back, out of the reach of the dragon, she surprised him by appearing in the flesh at his shoulder.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing.

  Lance took a look at what he’d done. It was a sheet of paper painted green. That’s all there was.

  ‘It’s a meadow,’ Lance said quickly. (It was the only green thing that sprang to mind.)

  Miss Mirabelle wasn’t impressed.

  ‘Real meadows don’t look like that,’ she scoffed. ‘Real meadows aren’t just solid green squares. They have weeds, and patches of mud, and fences and ditches. They have molehills and paths across them. And wild flowers, and cows.’

  She sailed off, to look at someone else’s work.

  Lance scowled at her departing back. Really, when she was in this mood she wasn’t a damsel worth rescuing at all.

  ‘And cowpats,’ he added rudely under his breath. ‘Don’t forget they have cowpats.’

  And, reaching across, he stuck his paintbrush into one of the other pots, stabbed at his plain green square, and ground the brush round and round.

  ‘There!’ he said crossly. ‘A real meadow.’

  A splotch of cowpat brown sat right in the middle of his sheet of paper. One country pancake in a field of green.

  Lance stared at it. And then he stared some more. Then some more. Inside his brain, a little idea was growing, growing, growing. An idea that grew, like Flossie the baby calf, until it was enormous. An idea big enough to save the day.

  ‘Miss Mirabelle.’

  Lance tiptoed towards her desk. She was sitting with her head cupped in her hands, staring out of the window.

  ‘Miss Mirabelle,’ he whispered. ‘I have had an idea.’

  Miss Mirabelle turned her head.

  ‘An idea?’

  She looked hopeful.

  ‘Yes,’ Lance said softly. ‘I have an idea. It’s easy to arrange, and no one else would ever think of doing it.’

  Her eyes lit up. Could it be possible?

  ‘And,’ Lance added proudly, ‘it is exactly the sort of idea that really ought to be kept a secret.’

  Miss Mirabelle’s velvety-brown eyes were melting as she looked at him.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said. Excitedly, she pushed the box of tissues aside and patted the corner of her desk. ‘Sit here and tell me your idea.’

  ‘It’s very different,’ warned Lance. ‘Some people might even think it was –’ He paused, searching for the right word, and couldn’t find it. He finished up: ‘– a bit too different.’

  ‘Try me,’ said Miss Mirabelle.

  So Lance perched on the corner of her desk and told Miss Mirabelle his idea. As he explained, a little smile came on to her face for the first time that morning. It grew and grew, like his idea, until it was enormous.

  ‘Brilliant!’ she said, when he had finished. ‘How did you think of that?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘It is amazing,’ she said. He could tell from the expression on her face that she was delighted. ‘That is –’ She paused, searching for the right word, and couldn’t find it.

  ‘Different,’ she finished up at last. ‘That is certainly different.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ agreed Lance. ‘It’s different, all right.’

  Miss Mirabelle turned to the class.

  ‘We have been saved,’ she announced. ‘Lance here has had the most brilliant idea.’

  Everyone stopped painting to listen. Miss Mirabelle pushed Lance forward.

  ‘Go on,’ she ordered. ‘Tell everybody.’

  So Lance explained his idea a second time. When he had finished there was a long, long silence. The whole class was staring at him. They couldn’t believe it. Then, suddenly, someone at the back began to giggle. Just one person at first, and very softly. But soon there was another. And another. And another. And soon the whole class was rocking and laughing, and calling out excitedly.

  ‘It’s certainly different.’

  ‘There’ll be no trouble keeping it a secret. No one would ever dare tell Mrs Spicer!’

  ‘No one will want to miss it. Everyone will come.’

  ‘We’ll make
a fortune. Everyone will want a ticket!’

  ‘It’s brilliant. Brilliant.’

  ‘Why has nobody ever thought of it before?’

  ‘I know why!’

  ‘So do I!’

  Miss Mirabelle rose. The silver bell earrings tinkled as she cried out:

  ‘Three cheers for Lancelot Higgins! Hip, hip, hooray!’

  Mrs Spicer peeped through the little glass pane in the door just as they were cheering their heads off. Nobody even noticed.

  ‘Hip, hip, hooray!’

  ‘Good old Lance!’

  ‘And his amazing cow!’

  ‘Hip, hip, hooray.’

  4

  In which Mrs Spicer sees a great improvement all round, and is delighted

  Miss Mirabelle came into school the next morning with a smile on her face. She reached in her capacious woven bag and drew out several balls of knitting wool and two big boxes of brand-new ice-lolly sticks.

  She laid the balls of wool along the edge of her desk, and opened the box lids to show them the lolly sticks packed tightly inside.

  ‘One thousand,’ she said. ‘Exactly.’

  Miss Mirabelle looked round at the sea of baffled faces.

  ‘Now, listen carefully,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be a busy day. Let me explain . . .’

  Inside her officer, Mrs Spicer sat staring at the sheet of paper on her desk. Printed across the top were the words:

  Report on Miss Mirabelle

  and nothing else.

  Yet . . .

  Mrs Spicer was thinking. She was thinking hard. She knew exactly what she thought of Miss Mirabelle. Oh, yes. She knew exactly what she’d like to write. She just wasn’t absolutely sure it was quite fair to give anyone, even the amazing Miss Mirabelle, such a terrible report without checking one last time.

  She’d creep along. And if Miss Mirabelle was sitting with her head cupped in her hands, staring out of the window while a riot went on around her . . . Or if Miss Mirabelle was peeling an apple with her exquisite pearl knife while everyone watched the skin falling in one long perfect coil . . . Or if there were sniffers in the cupboard . . . Then Mrs Spicer would write her report. Yes! Every last word!