Weird

by Jeremy Strong

  The house is very big and has more staircases than a staircase factory. It smells of disinfectant, crap perfume and coffins.

  ‘You can’t put “crap”,’ said Josh.

  ‘I already have. Anyway, it is crap.’

  ‘And I bet you’ve never smelled a coffin in your life.’

  ‘That’s because you only get to smell a coffin at your death,’ Fizz said smartly. ‘It’s what journalists call a bit of local colour. Mrs Taylor told us in English.’

  ‘She’s having an affair,’ Josh informed Fizz.

  ‘I know. Everyone knows. With her salsa tutor.’

  ‘What on earth does he see in her? She’s so mousy. She wears glasses.’

  Fizz half turned and looked up at Josh. He was so gorgeous. Why did he have to be so dumb? ‘I wasn’t aware that wearing glasses stopped you from having a love life,’ she said. ‘Maybe Mrs Taylor’s salsa tutor sees more of her than just her glasses.’

  ‘I bet he does. A lot more!’

  ‘That is not what I meant,’ answered Fizz coldly. There was no point in pursuing it. She’d lost Josh to his fevered fantasy world. She turned back to the computer.

  Today we had to make tea for all the residents and take it to their rooms. We had to climb up and down a hundred stairs about a thousand times. We also had to do cleaning and washing-up. We had to restock all the bathrooms. This took ages and ages and we hardly had any time for lunch and we were completely exhausted by the time we finished and we still had to write up this assignment. We think this stinks.

  ‘I don’t think we should put that,’ said Josh.

  ‘Why not? It does stink. In fact, it is downright execrable.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It’s worse than stinks. Don’t you ever listen to Mrs Taylor? She said your friend Charlie’s handwriting was execrable the other day and Charlie asked her what it meant. He’s so cool.’

  ‘Cool? Charlie?’

  ‘Yeah, like sometimes he wears different socks – you know, his socks don’t match. One time he had a red sock and a blue sock.’

  ‘That’s cool?’ Josh asked in disbelief. Fizz rolled her eyes and sighed. Would Josh ever lighten up? Josh went on. ‘If we’re going to complain we should make it more…’

  ‘… more what?’ sighed Fizz. ‘More complaining?’

  ‘No. More like a proper complaint.’

  Fizz sat back and stared up at Josh. ‘What?’

  ‘Let me do it,’ Josh grunted, and he tried to push Fizz from her seat but she resisted. Him leaning up against her and pushing like that made her tingle. Josh gave a final shove and deleted Fizz’s last sentence.

  While we, the undersigned, accept that writing assignments and work experience are an unavoidable burden of school procedure we suggest that the work we are undertaking amounts to child labour and therefore places the school in grave danger of being pursued by the European Commission of Human Rights.

  ‘Get you! Are you planning on becoming a lawyer?’ demanded Fizz.

  ‘I’m trying to be a bit more polite, that’s all.’

  ‘Basically what you’ve written is “It stinks”, and you’ve used a thousand words when I used two. I still think two’s better.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Josh answered, ‘but mine will make a better impression on Mrs Taylor AND give us a better word count at the end.’

  Fizz wrinkled her nose and nodded. ‘OK, OK. Should we say something about the tunnel?’

  ‘No,’ said Josh. ‘We don’t know enough about it and I don’t want to get Mrs Kowalski into trouble. She trusts me and I don’t like the Major or Matron. They behave suspiciously. I think we should give the prunes all the help they need.’

  Fizz’s eyes sparked. ‘Cool! The rebels strike back! How many words have we done? Mrs Taylor said we should do at least four hundred.’

  ‘Three hundred and sixty-three.’

  Fizz began typing again.

  Number of words: Three hundred and sixty-three. This does not include the bit I just typed saying that the number of words is three hundred and sixty-three. If you include the bit that says three hundred and sixty-three words we have actually done four hundred and ten. Result! (Update – 411, not including this section in brackets.)

  ‘I don’t think Mrs Taylor will think much of that last bit,’ sighed Josh.

  ‘Tough. It’s your turn tomorrow and we’ll go to your house.’

  Josh was silent. His house. Animals. Noise. Smell. Chaos.

  Josh

  When I got back home from Fizz’s there was a giant, hairy Alsatian guarding the front gate. I had to shout for Mum to come and restrain it.

  ‘His name is Sheba,’ Mum told me, trying to stop him lungeing at me. ‘He just needs to get used to you.’

  ‘Sheba’s a girl’s name.’

  ‘He’s confused.’

  ‘You mean whoever named him is confused,’ I answered, but Mum shook her head.

  ‘Dogs often take on the character of their owner, you know, and sometimes exaggerate them a bit.’

  I thought about that. ‘So whoever named Sheba is a transvestite?’

  ‘No, Josh, that’s not what I meant at all. I shall think of a better name eventually – Tennyson, perhaps. Anyhow, where have you been?’

  I told her. Mum raised her eyebrows and studied my face. I could hear the connections in her brain – click, whirr, clunk, thud. My son has been at a girl’s house. Aha! Boy + girl + house = relationship. It was tediously predictable.

  ‘Felicity Foster-Thompson? Do I know her? What does she look like?’

  That stumped me for a second. What did Fizz look like? My brain sifted possible answers at blinding speed.

  Ans. No. 1. She wears the smallest miniskirt in school? Reject.

  Ans. No. 2. She had blue knickers on today? Reject.

  Ans. No. 3. She has fantastic legs? Reject.

  Then I had it.

  ‘She wears glasses and she knits.’

  ‘Oh. Is she pretty?’

  ‘No. She’s got braces on her teeth, which she likes to tuck cress behind, and she’s weird.’

  ‘In what way?’ asked Mum with interest.

  How could I possibly describe what I meant by ‘weird’ to someone who thought keeping goats, snakes and iguanas in the house and naming them after poets was perfectly acceptable?

  ‘She talks a lot,’ I said at length.

  ‘Oh, that is weird,’ said Mum, giving me a disappointed look. ‘Do you like her?’

  ‘If you mean “like her” as in “like her”, she’s OK. If you mean “like her” as in “fancy her”, the answer is “no”.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a “yes” then,’ beamed Mum.

  ‘I said I don’t fancy her!’

  ‘Kids your age never say what they really mean. So how was Marigolds?’

  ‘Full of loonies.’

  The smile slid from Mum’s face. ‘Josh! They’re old, that’s all. They’ve lived more lives and have more memories than you and me put together. They may look decrepit to you but many of them have had extraordinary moments.’

  So I told her about Mrs Kowalski flying Spitfires. Mum seemed to think that was way beyond extraordinary. ‘Are you sure? I don’t remember your great-gran ever saying anything like that. Women took on men’s jobs when the men got called up but I’ve never heard of them flying. Great-gran was a Land Girl, working on the farm. But flying Spitfires?’ Mum shook her head. ‘Old people can get quite confused sometimes. She sounds a character, anyhow.’

  I almost told Mum about the tunnel, but I sensed danger. Give an adult that sort of information and they are likely to do the sort of thing they would describe as ‘sensible’ – in other words, tell some authority or other, like the Department of Social Services Stop Tunnels for the Elderly. Besides, I didn’t have any information, apart from what Mrs Kowalski had told me, and I wasn’t entirely sure if I believed her. Mum thought the old lady was confused and she could well be right. I decided to d
o a bit of research and went on the web. It wasn’t long before I was directed to a possible site: www.motherfl ieshurricanes.com.

  There it was in black and white. The ATA – Air Transport Auxiliary – was set up during the war for the RAF because of pilot shortage. Male pilots went on front-line service, while a whole flock of women pilots ferried new planes from factories to airbases, wherever they were needed. Mrs Kowalski must have been with the ATA. Maybe she had flown Spitfires. Cool.

  I sat back in my chair and tried to take it all in. Battle. Prisoners. Tunnels. Flight. Escape. There were links here with my own life. The far end of my desk was dominated by the towering red fuselage of Escape IV. It was the fourth rocket I had built to my own design, and it was the biggest, the most complex and by far the most challenging one to construct. I was proud of it and now it was almost ready for its maiden flight. But would it work?

  Why call it Escape IV? Because one day I would be an astronaut. I would leave this animal house, this mad world, and fulfil my dream of going to the stars. Dad’s dream too, but he was too old now, unless somebody was planning to build an interplanetary care home somewhere up there. I was sure Mrs Kowalski would understand my dream of flying, just as I understood her dream of escaping.

  But before any of these dreams could be fulfilled I had to remove three jungle frogs from the shower and get cleaned up after working at Marigolds. It was only when I was showering that I noticed a small green snake coiled around the shower head, watching me. Milton had escaped again. I got dressed, wound him round a finger and wearily returned him to his vivarium. Still, it was good to feel clean again after all that contact with prehistory.

  All I had to do now was worry about bringing Fizz back to the house. My bedroom was fine – clean and neat as always – unless some creature decided to wander in and make their nest, den, lair, eyrie or burrow in my room while I was out. It was the rest of the house I was worried about. Suppose Fizz needed the loo and came face to face with Milton? He wasn’t poisonous, but how would Fizz know? It wasn’t as if he had a label round his neck.

  ‘He likes being near water,’ said Mum.

  ‘Why not put a bowl in his tank then?’

  ‘Because animals don’t expect to find water next to them. It’s not natural. They must hunt for it. It’s an instinct. They have to go on a search. Same as us. We’re all animals, and we’re all searching, Josh.’

  I think that was Mum’s Thought For The Day. I wondered what I was searching for. That was easy. Lauren. However, at the moment I had more pressing things on my mind. Perhaps I could tidy up the house a bit? Or perhaps not. How can you tidy up five goats, two hamsters, a gerbil, four guinea pigs, two rabbits, three dogs, five cats, a pigeon and an eagle owl? Not forgetting Milton.

  I rang Charlie. He’s working in a shoe shop and I asked him how it was going.

  ‘Goat, you really don’t want to know. In a word, socks. You wouldn’t believe the state of some people’s socks. Not to mention their feet.’

  ‘Their feet?’

  ‘I told you not to mention them.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘Yes. How did it go at the care home?’

  I told him about Mrs Kowalski flying Spitfires.

  ‘Cool! Has she got a moustache?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought you had to have a big, bushy moustache to fly Spitfires. You look at the photographs of flying aces. They have all got big, bushy moustaches.’

  ‘Charlie, you’re an idiot.’

  ‘My great-gran had a moustache. I remember it clearly.’

  ‘Mrs Kowalski does not have a moustache. Listen, I saw Lauren this afternoon.’

  ‘Don’t say that word. I shall have to lie down in a dark room.’

  ‘She was sunbathing in a blue bikini.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘And she was rubbing sun oil on.’

  ‘OK, that’s enough. I can’t cope. I’m putting the phone down.’

  And he did. I’d meant to ask him how I could wriggle out of the next day’s appointment with overwhelming embarrassment, namely Fizz coming to my house, but it was too late now, and by the time I went to bed I still hadn’t thought of a way out of it.

  I didn’t sleep well. I had a dream about Lauren. She was here visiting and she was looking at all the animals. She thought they were cute, until one of the jungle frogs jumped down her front and she screamed. She stood there waving her hands frantically, not daring to do anything because she thought the frog was venomous and might bite her. She kept screaming at me, ‘Get it out! Get it out!’ I had to put my hand down her top but the frog kept jumping about. It was really difficult to get hold of and I’d make a grab and get something else instead and Lauren kept on yelping. Eventually I managed to pull it out and put it back in the tank only to have Lauren collapse into my arms sobbing. ‘You saved me!’ she said. There was a bit more after that. Little wonder I didn’t sleep well.

  Then I had to drag myself off to Marigolds for another day piling up loo rolls and delivering them and all that kind of stuff. It was so boring. At least until Fizz showed up. She was late again of course and she got another roasting from Matron. She was so fed up she abandoned all the washing-up and slipped upstairs to see what I was doing. There’s no stopping her. She pokes her nose into everything.

  ‘These bathrooms are unreal,’ she said. ‘What is all this stuff for?’ I stopped my exciting work replacing bars of soap and went over to where she was inspecting a big metal arm that stuck out from the wall. Four steel hawsers hung from the arm, attached to a floppy seat.

  ‘What do they do in here?’ winced Fizz. ‘Suspend wrinklies by their thumbs?’

  ‘It’s a hydraulic hoist for people who are unable to get into the bath by themselves.’

  ‘Cool! How does it work then?’

  ‘You fill the bath and sit in this little seat. These are the controls. Lift, swing across over the bath and lower yourself into the water. Job done.’

  Fizz beamed at me. ‘Great! Let’s do it! Get in the seat.’

  ‘Fizz!’

  ‘Oh, lighten up, Josh. I’m bored to death. Go on, get in.’

  I admit I was curious too. I sat in the seat. Fizz pressed a button and I landed heavily on the floor.

  ‘Oops! Sorry. I’ve just noticed – it says DOWN beside that button.’

  ‘Try UP,’ I said, trying not to sound too sarcastic.

  The machine hummed. I slowly rose into the air. The seat swung from side to side. The machine whirred and I moved across to the bath.

  ‘I wonder if it has an EJECT button,’ mused Fizz, then saw the look on my face. ‘It’s a joke. OK, let’s get you washed. Of course, you should get undressed first.’

  That was when Matron burst in. ‘Oh no you don’t! I heard that, young lady. What on earth do you two think you’re playing at? You wait until your school hears about this, not to mention your parents. They will be appalled. I blush to think what you might have done next.’

  ‘It was a joke,’ explained Fizz. ‘I meant that if Josh was really going to have a bath he would need to get undressed but obviously he wasn’t going to have a real bath so he wasn’t going to get undressed either. I was teasing, wasn’t I, Josh?’

  I nodded glumly as the seat swung above the bath, with me trapped in it. I felt such an idiot. Matron’s Kalashnikov eyes were still spraying bullets in every direction.

  ‘And just what did you think you were doing playing with this equipment?’

  ‘We’re practising for when we’re old,’ Fizz answered brightly. I groaned inwardly. Didn’t Fizz have any sense of self-preservation at all?

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense, and you, boy, get out of that seat at once. Do you think this equipment is a toy? It’s hugely expensive. How dare you behave like this. Wait until your head teacher hears about it. I said, get out!’

  I was still struggling in mid-air. Just as I was carefully sliding out of the seat Fizz pressed the DOWN button and I was dumped in the bath
. ‘Ow!’

  Matron hauled me to my feet. ‘Wait for me outside the Major’s office,’ she hissed. ‘Both of you.’

  Fizz and I trooped downstairs. ‘Congratulations,’ I growled.

  ‘It’s your fault,’ she said. My jaw hit the floor and bounced back up.

  ‘What? How do you make that out?’

  ‘If you hadn’t been upstairs I wouldn’t have come up to find you and I wouldn’t have found the bathroom and if you hadn’t got into that seat it wouldn’t have happened at all.’

  ‘But you told me to get in.’

  ‘Maybe, but you didn’t have to. If you hadn’t got in it wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘You mean if I hadn’t been there none of this could have happened?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘On that basis it would be better if I hadn’t even been born,’ I pointed out coldly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In fact, logically, that means that it would be better if my parents hadn’t been born, then they couldn’t have produced me. And their parents shouldn’t have been born either, or their parents, or their parents, all the way back to Adam and Eve.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Fizz with a curt nod. ‘It was all their fault. Adam and Eve’s.’

  ‘Try telling the Major that,’ I said and I couldn’t help smirking.

  And you know what? She did! Was he impressed? Not a bit of it. He told her she was being ridiculous. But I was impressed, which was strange. It was as if I had dared her and she’d accepted. I don’t know what it is with Fizz. She’s like one of those itches you get in the middle of your back that you can’t quite reach. Annoying.

  I think the Major would have let us go with a telling-off but Matron went on and on and made such a fuss about ‘abusing expensive equipment’ that in the end the Major made us stay in at lunchtime and do extra work to make up for the time we’d spent ‘playing’, as he put it. Then, in the afternoon, I was surprised by Mrs Kowalski again, creeping up on me in her stealth slippers.

  ‘How’s the tunnel going?’ I asked.