A picture came into my head of Graham Lewis sprawled on the canteen floor covered in chips.
‘I suppose you are,’ I said.
Joss propped himself up on one elbow and smiled down at me.
‘I’m going to save you,’ he said. ‘Clearly, that’s why I’ve been sent to London.’
‘Why were you sent to London?’ I asked. ‘I mean, really?’
Joss rolled his eyes. ‘I wasn’t given a choice.’
I rolled my eyes back. ‘What about standing up for yourself?’
‘Questions, questions . . .’ All of a sudden he was on his feet, with his beanie pulled back down, shoving his ciggies into his jeans pocket.
‘Time for bed,’ he said. ‘Night night, gorgeous.’ He blew me a kiss and then he was gone.
I am trying not to think about the fact that Joss Bateman blew me a kiss or that he called me gorgeous.
Gorgeous, used the way he used it, is just a word at the end of a sentence.
Monday 3 October
Joss is not as good at sorting things with school as he claims to be. This morning at break I had to go to the Headmaster (Call Me God)’s office to explain how I came to disappear from school halfway through Friday afternoon.
‘I didn’t feel well,’ I mumbled.
‘Your classmate Mr Lyall says he left you with the nurse. And yet the nurse says she never saw you.’
‘It’s not Jake’s fault,’ I said.
God gave me that look teachers give you when they know that short of using physical torture they’re not going to get any more out of you.
‘I am Very Disappointed in you, Bluebell Gadsby,’ he said (he always uses capital letters when he is giving a lecture). ‘I like to think of you as the Sensible One of your Family. I hope this is not the Beginning of a Slippery Slope.’
On the way out I bumped into Flora, waiting for her weekly argument with God about her appearance.
‘What are you doing here?’ she cried.
She was furious when I explained. Flora is not nearly as rebellious as she looks. She may like to shock people with her bright hair and her weird outfits, she may have a gazillion friends and always be right at the glittering centre of a very big crowd, but she could be as small and mousy and bespectacled as me for all the rules she actually breaks.
‘You can’t just bunk off school like that!’ she ranted at me. ‘What if Mum and Dad found out?’
‘Oh, get lost, Flora,’ I said at last and she just gaped at me because like everybody else she is not used to me answering back.
‘What?’
‘I said, get lost.’ I marched off, leaving her watching me with her mouth hanging open, even though God was shouting at her to come into his office.
I stood up for myself.
And it felt good.
Friday 7 October
Twig and Jas announced this morning that they wanted to walk to school on their own. Zoran said no, that one of his Express Duties was to take them to school and what would Mum say if something had happened to them?
‘At the rate she’s going,’ said Flora, ‘she will probably never know.’
Mum is in New York this week, and Flora’s hair now has scarlet streaks.
Zoran said, ‘That’s not fair, your mother loves you very much’ and then when Flora said, ‘Ha!’ he added that it didn’t suit her to sound so sour, and she said that was rich coming from him and then they started to argue about which of them had the most reason to be bitter about their parents. Which is Zoran, obviously, because even though we are practically orphans Mum told us that his parents actually are dead. While they were fighting, I watched Twig and Jas slip out of the house and head off towards school, way earlier than they normally would but I guess they just saw their chance and took it. Zoran was furious when he realised they had gone. Flora hasn’t laughed so hard in ages.
I hadn’t seen Joss all week until this evening, not to talk to I mean, but then he came round again tonight, climbing on to the roof as usual. It was cold and I thought of asking him in, but then I worried someone would hear so I climbed out instead.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘This Dodi cow. We have to take her down.’
‘Um,’ I said.
Joss laughed. ‘Just give me the dirt on her,’ he said, ‘and you will have sweet revenge.’
‘Dirt?’ I said.
‘There must be something,’ said Joss. ‘Some murky secret from her past. Something she’s scared of.’
‘Dodi, scared?’ Dodi might look like Barbie, all blonde hair and sparkly clothes, but underneath she’s tough. Last year when we went abseiling on our school trip, she was the first one to go over the edge, and then she stood at the bottom laughing at anyone who said they were scared of heights.
‘I think actually most people are a little afraid of her,’ I said.
‘You’re not trying,’ Joss scolded.
He looked so earnest. The sky behind him was dark tonight, not orange. That happens sometimes, I’ve noticed. Zoran cut the lawn this afternoon – he says it will be the last time this year – and the air was sharp with the smell of grass. Joss was in shadows but I could see his profile, his turned-up nose and hair falling in his eyes. He was waiting for an answer.
I thought, maybe I should tell him why it’s complicated.
Instead, I told him what he needed to know.
The Film Diaries Of Bluebell Gadsby
Scene Seven (Transcript)
The Fall of Dodi Cartwright
DAYTIME. CLASS 8A’S FORM ROOM, VIEWED FROM BENEATH THE DESK WHERE CAMERAMAN (BLUE) IS FILMING IN SECRET. AFTERNOON, THE BREAK IN THE MIDDLE OF DOUBLE FRENCH.
MADAME GILBERT has just left the room and will not return for eight and a half minutes, the time it takes her to scurry to the school gate, light up and smoke three-quarters of a Gauloise. Camera pans slowly, taking in linoleum floor, the underside of desks bristling with gum, the legs of tables, chairs and humans before settling on the lower half of the door just as it begins to creak open.
Picture shakes as CAMERAMAN (BLUE) retrieves camera from beneath desk. Nobody sees her. All eyes are turned to the door, drawn by the whirr and squeak that followed the opening creak. They expect to see Madame Gilbert. The expressions on their faces range from anticipation (HATTIE VERNEY, class swot) to torpor (JAKE LYALL, who is almost asleep), to indifference (almost everybody else), but they change when they see who the newcomer is. Jake wakes up and begins to laugh. Hattie is horrified. They both look incredulous. All other faces reflect a combination of the above. For sitting in the doorway, strapped into a remote-controlled model of a Jaguar XK120 SE DHC convertible, is a large white rat.
THE CLASS holds its collective breath, knowing that to attract attention to itself now would be fatal to their enjoyment of what is to come. JAWS THE GREAT WHITE RAT (for it is he) sits in the driver’s seat, plotting his escape strategy. The Jaguar’s whirring increases to a low scream, and then both it and its rodent passenger are on the move.
Camera shakes as the class erupts. Girls scream. Boys cheer. Everybody laughs. Jaws the Great White Rat struggles against the bonds which shackle him, in the form of an orange knitted tie. The car veers a bit from left to right, as if operated by someone who can’t quite see what he is doing. Door creaks again. Camera pans briefly left, JOSS steps into doorframe from corridor where he has been hiding, holding remote control. Nobody turns to look at him, but car now moves in straight line towards the only silent person in the room who isn’t holding a video camera.
DODI
(very pale, through clenched teeth)
Get lost, ratty.
JAWS THE GREAT WHITE RAT
Eeeeeeeek!
JAKE
(yelling, as if teachers didn’t exist)
HERE COME ANOTHER TWO!
Camera, no longer bothering to hide, whips back to the door. betsy and PETAL, in Twig’s battered Aston Martin and a brand-new Alfa Romeo, are motoring into the room and also making a beeline for D
odi. They come to a halt a foot away from her, all three cars fanned out in a semi-circle.
DODI
(looking green)
This is so not funny.
BETSY, PETAL and JAWS THE GREAT WHITE RAT
(squirming and gnawing at the Ties Which Bind Them)
Eek! Squeak! Eek, eek, eek!
DODI
I’m getting out of here.
She notices BLUE, who is still filming.
DODI (CONT’D)
(attempting a sneer)
What, you thought I’d be scared?
BLUE does not answer but continues to film (bravely). Dodi curls her lip, grabs her school-bag with every appearance of bravado and prepares for a sweeping exit.
DODI (CONT’D, AGAIN)
AGGGHHHH!
CASPAR (one of the male baby rats) shoots out of the bag, panics, runs up Dodi’s arm and on to her head to which he clings, quivering and keening. The class roars. Dodi bursts into tears and sinks sobbing to the ground. The race cars rev their engines, rocking back and forth. Betsy (or is it Petal?) breaks loose from the Aston Martin and shoots through a tangle of legs, causing more screams and hysterical laughter. A cheering crowd has gathered by the door. Nobody notices when Madame Gilbert returns, shouting in French, nor when God turns up, waving detention slips, nor when JOSS slips in wearing a satisfied grin. The pandemonium only subsides when FLORA streaks into the room, screaming blue murder and brandishing a lacrosse stick.
FLORA
(landing lacrosse stick neatly over Petal,or maybe Betsy)
I knew it! I knew they were ours as soon as I heard there were rats!
GOD
What do you mean, yours? Flora Gadsby, are these your rats?
FLORA
(to Joss, still screaming)
What the hell do you think you’re doing?
JOSS
(calmly)
I was delivering justice.
FLORA
(shovelling rats into her messenger bag)
Justice! Ha!
GOD
I demand you answer my question!
JOSS
(nobly)
I claim full responsibility, sir.
MADAME GILBERT
(hysterically)
Quel horrible garçon! Never would such a thing happen in France.
FLORA
(rudely)
For God’s sake, you eat frogs’ legs!
GOD
Miss Gadsby, you are in detention! Mr Bateman, so are you! (Spots Blue, who is still filming) And you too, Bluebell Gadsby! In fact, this whole class is in detention! I will not have rodents in my school or chaos in my classrooms! (Spots Dodi, still cowering on the floor.) Stand up, Miss Cartwright! Miss Cartwright! You are not a child.
Dodi Cartwright struggles slowly to her feet. Those closest to her wrinkle their noses. They look puzzled until, slowly, they begin to understand.
Dodi Cartwright has a large damp patch on the back of her skirt and a yellow puddle at her feet.
Camera goes off with a satisfied click.
Friday 21 October
Friday 21 October
They went nuts at home.
‘What a thoroughly irresponsible thing to do!’ scolded Zoran.
‘Poor Jaws! Poor Caspar! Poor Betsy and Petal!’ cried Jas.
‘You could have lost them! You could have killed them! You could have broken the cars!’ shouted Twig.
‘To say nothing of that poor girl, being publicly humiliated! You should be ashamed of yourself, Blue,’ said Zoran, but I could see that he was trying not to laugh.
And yet here’s the thing. They all screamed at me when I got home, and Zoran is still being all disapproving, but they made me play the video. And then after I’d played it, they made me play it again. And again. And each time, it became a little bit less about cruelty to Dodi and to rats and a lot more about animal stardom.
‘Doesn’t Betsy look cute in the Alfa Romeo!’ cooed Jas.
‘And Caspar!’ cried Twig. ‘Isn’t he brave?’
‘That woman is wrong and completely discriminatory,’ said Zoran. ‘I’m sure exactly the same thing happens in French classrooms.’
‘Not exactly the same thing,’ said Flora. ‘Surely never exactly the same thing. This is unique, this is.’ And they all stared at me like they couldn’t believe it was me who had done it.
Later, when the Babes had gone to bed, Flora told Zoran everything Joss had told her about Dodi and Cressida during detention, when they were supposed to be working on a maths assignment but were actually having a fierce whispered argument in the back of the classroom with the rats chewing everything in Flora’s messenger bag (the one she has customised by turning all the flowers into skulls). It was almost dark by the time they let us out of school. We all walked home together and Flora apologised for not realising what a cow Dodi was being to me.
‘I knew you weren’t friends any more,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t realise she was actually being horrible.’
‘You must have noticed Blue was unhappy,’ said Joss.
‘No more than usual,’ said Flora, but she said it nicely, and she took my hand and squeezed it, which is as close to ‘sorry’ as you get from Flora.
‘I wish you’d come to me,’ she said.
‘Joss found out first.’
‘Thank you, Joss,’ said Flora stiffly. ‘For looking after my sister.’
‘Anytime,’ said Joss. Flora sniffed and said this didn’t mean she approved of cruelty to animals.
‘I wish you’d told me too,’ said Zoran.
‘I will next time,’ I promised as I went up to bed, because it seemed to be what he wanted to hear. I yawned. Flora and Zoran stood together at the bottom of the stairs, looking concerned, but I left them to it. I got undressed and into bed, and now I am lying here, thinking about what Zoran said about feeling ashamed of myself.
Dodi’s house backs on to a huge communal garden, and at the end of Year 5, when Mum said we were old enough to walk there on our own, we lived there. We went there every day after school through all of that last summer term, and we played there for hours, long complicated pretend games invented by Iris. Dodi’s mum brought our tea out and we were so hungry but having so much fun that we ate it as we played.
Until the Mouse Picnic.
The picnic when for once we were playing so hard we forgot about tea, and a field-mouse – a teeny-weeny field-mouse – scampered out of the undergrowth to nibble at a jam sandwich.
Iris saw it first. She stopped running and she whispered ‘oh, oh, oh’ like it was the sweetest, most important thing she had ever seen in her entire life, and she tiptoed towards it.
I stood still and watched. The mouse looked up and sniffed. Its whiskers twitched, but it really liked that sandwich and Iris walked so softly, so softly . . . She untied her bandana – she told me later that she was going to catch the mouse with it.
‘And I would have, too,’ she complained. ‘If it hadn’t been for Dodi.’
Dodi didn’t think the mouse was sweet. She didn’t stop, or say ‘oh, oh, oh’, or watch with bated breath.
Dodi saw the mouse, screamed, and fainted dead away.
I had forgotten all about it until Joss asked. I’m worried that I’m starting to forget lots of things about Iris. Because that story is as much about Iris as it is about Dodi.
Really, I suppose, it is about the three of us, and how we used to be.
Back when we were friends Dodi wore glasses just like mine, little wire-framed ones which made her look a bit mad because one of her ears is higher than the other so they were always crooked, plus her mum always made her wear her hair in bunches, which made the mad crooked thing worse. Now she’s all glamorous with contact lenses and her hair all layered, and the point is, Zoran doesn’t have to put up with her meanness. He doesn’t spend his days being miserable and lonely or having chairs pulled out from under him.
Good things happened today. Really good things.
I don’t care what Zoran says. Today was absolutely perfect.
Saturday 22 October: Early Evening
Zoran had a long conversation with Mr Bateman this morning in the front garden. He said that Mr Bateman had come to apologise for Joss’s part in what he calls the great rat debacle, and said that Joss had a history of what he called ‘unruly behaviour’.
‘He saved me,’ I said, and Zoran said, ‘Even so’ and sniffed.
Zoran is very traditional.
Joss came round when the others were all out, Flora at a rehearsal and Zoran at karate with the Babes. He said it was to bring stuff back, like rat food and a water bottle, and the bag he took them to school in, but then he hovered on the doorstep sort of looking over my shoulder until I asked him in.
It was strange being alone in the house with him. Very different from talking on the roof when everyone was asleep. I made tea, and he slumped down at the kitchen counter to drink it.
‘I’ve been grounded,’ he said.
‘Because of yesterday?’ I asked.
‘Yeah.’ Joss pulled a face. ‘And I was supposed to be going home today. One of my friends is having a party.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I stammered.
‘Don’t be silly!’ He smiled and his whole face lit up, like the party didn’t matter and he’d already forgotten about it. ‘It was totally worth it. The look on God’s face when he realised she’d wet herself!’
I felt a twinge of guilt at that, but Joss was grinning all over his face now and it was impossible not to grin back, and then before I could say anything Zoran and the Babes were piling into the house with Flora right behind them and it was impossible to get a word in edgeways.
After Iris: the Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby Page 5