Head Kid

by David Baddiel

  “Thuuuuhhh horn on the bus goes—”

  “Beep, beep, beep. It does. It so does.” His eyes scanned the classroom. They settled for a moment – or so it seemed to her – on Dionna. In fact, it seemed as if Mr Carter was smiling at her. She looked round in case she was mistaken and he’d meant the smile for someone behind her. Which was a bit silly, as I have already explained that she and Ryan sat at the back of the class.

  Either way, when she looked back, Mr Carter was no longer smiling at her. He was looking around at the rest of the class.

  “Now. We are missing someone, aren’t we? In Six B. Where is he? Where oh where is … Ryan Ward? It’s odd. It seems as if he’s vanished. As if he’s gone completely! Absolutely cannot be found in his normal place.”

  “Here I am,” said Ryan Ward in a weary voice.

  Mr Carter turned round, then laughed.

  “Oh! That’s where you are. In the bin! What are you doing there?”

  Ryan stared at him, a very You saw me as soon as you came in – why are we bothering to pretend otherwise? look on his face. “Well, Head Teacher …” His voice landed on those words heavily. “I think what happened was that even Caspar, a four-year-old, could see that I –” and here his stare at Mr Carter grew harder – “Ryan Ward, was – how can I put this? – trash. Yes. That’s the right word: trash. He looked at me, Ryan Ward, and thought about Ryan Ward’s behaviour, and clearly felt there was only one place for me – Ryan Ward.” He turned his fierce gaze to Caspar. “Isn’t that right, sir?”

  Caspar seemed at a bit of a loss as to what to say. So he said, “Shh. Shh. Shh?”

  “That’s what the mummies say, yes,” said Ryan.

  “And,” said Mr Carter, who seemed a little shaken by Ryan’s speech, “I think it’s a good thing to say to you … Ryan. Perhaps shushing you is a good idea. Because, frankly, I think you … well, I think you may have some self-esteem issues.”

  “Do you,” said Ryan. Not with a question mark.

  “I do. Here,” said Mr Carter, extending a hand, “let me help you out of that.”

  Ryan stared at him again. “No thanks. I can get myself out.”

  And he did easily enough and walked back to his seat.

  There was a tense silence following this exchange. But then Mr Carter seemed to recover his energy and beamed at the class.

  “Right! That’s that sorted. Now, I know Caspar’s been doing a brilliant job with History, but it’s time for the next lesson: PE!”

  Everyone in the class looked at each other. Mr Barrington – with some difficulty and what appeared to be quite a lot of pain – uncurled himself from the small chair and too-low table. It was a much slower and more awkward process than Ryan climbing from the bin. He stuck both legs out to the right and then pushed himself out, sliding completely to the ground, then kneeling, going “uggh” a lot, before heaving himself up and brushing himself down.

  “Excuse me, Mr Carter,” he said, after breathing heavily for a bit. “You may have forgotten – we only do PE on a Wednesday afternoon.”

  “Oh yes, I did forget. Hang on a minute, let me check my timetable.”

  Mr Carter took out a piece of paper from his pocket. He looked at it for a moment, concentrating. Then he said, “Hmm. But this says …”

  He turned it round to face Mr Barrington and the class. On it was written in block capitals, BUM OFF, BUMMINGTON!

  Which got a very big laugh from the classroom.

  “Oh,” said Mr Barrington.

  “Everyone to the playground!” said Mr Carter.

  The whole school was standing in the playground. By the whole school I mean every single pupil. And by standing in the playground I mean standing at one end of the playground. At the other were the teachers. In the middle was Mr Carter. With a referee’s whistle round his neck.

  “Right!” shouted Mr Carter. “It’s time to play … British Bulldog!”

  “Oh dear,” said Mrs Wang.

  “I thought it might be,” said Miss Finch.

  “Hooray!” said Miss Gerard, and fell over.

  “Teachers versus pupils, obviously!” shouted Mr Carter.

  The teachers – who were severely outnumbered – gulped.

  “You know the rules! Each side has to get as many people to the other end as possible! And each side has to try to stop the other side doing that! By any means NECESSARY!”

  “Excuse me,” said Mr Barrington.

  “Yes, Bu—”

  “Don’t call me Bummington! Please!”

  “Oh, OK.”

  “Is that fair, sir? There are a lot more of them.”

  “Yes, but you’re bigger.”

  “Well …” said Mr Barrington uncertainly, looking over at the older children, some of whom were stretching and limbering up in anticipation. “I don’t know about that.”

  “The Gruffalo certainly is.”

  “Who’s he talking about?” said Miss Finch.

  “But hey!” said Mr Carter. “I’ve thought about that. I’ve come up with a way of making this game of British Bulldog a bit different! Which might help!”

  He put the silver whistle hanging round his neck in his mouth and blew loudly. At which point, Scarlet and Stirling suddenly appeared, one on each side of the playground. Stirling stood in front of the teachers holding a box. Scarlet stood in front of the children with a similar box.

  “iBabies – I mean Scarlet! Stirling! Thank you for your help! Now, here’s how this works. When the boxes are open, something will come out of each one. That thing is your captain: your leader. No one is allowed to go further ahead than that thing. All team members must stay behind the thing. OK?”

  Everyone – teachers and pupils – frowned. But Mr Carter raised his arm.

  “The game begins on the whistle, at which point Scarlet and Stirling will open their boxes. So …!”

  He blew hard on his whistle.

  Stirling opened his box. Out of which came Benny the tortoise. Scarlet opened her box. Out of which came Bjornita the tortoise.

  Benny stood still. Bjornita stuck her long neck out, looked around and very, very slowly moved forward.

  “Come on, teams!” shouted Mr Carter. “Go for it! British Tortoise!”

  “Go for what?” shouted Ellie Stone.

  “Follow your captain! In fact, make like your captain!”

  With that, Mr Carter started doing an impression of a tortoise. He bent over low, stuck both his arms out crookedly and moved in slow motion while sticking his head up and looking around as if for pieces of manky lettuce.

  Everyone looked on, amazed. It was, it has to be said, not an action most people – pupils and teachers – would have found in the How to Be a Head Teacher handbook. If such a book exists.

  “Come on!” he shouted in a deep, croaky voice, meant, one would have to assume, to be tortoise-like.

  And gradually the children – Barry Bennett, Jake, Lukas and Taj, Ellie and Fred Stone, Isla and Morris Fawcett, Scarlet and Stirling, and Malcolm Bailey (who seemed, for some reason, particularly good at it) – all started to copy him and walk like a tortoise.

  “Come on, teachers! Hey!” said Mr Carter, now on all fours. “Tortoise towards the other side! Or you’ll lose!”

  Mr Barrington looked at Miss Finch, who looked at Miss Gerard, who looked at Mrs Wang, who shrugged, put her face down, stuck her crutches out and started tortoising behind Bjornita towards the tortoising children. It worked well, actually, because tortoises move a little bit like they are on crutches all the time.

  An hour later, it was time for lunch. Nobody had really won British Tortoise – Benny had wandered off the playground towards the patchy grass side area, in search of … patchy grass, basically … which meant that the kids’ team had to follow him there. Then Bjornita had been frightened by all the noise and just retreated into her shell, which meant the teachers had to curl up into little balls with their hands over their heads at the other end of the playground. But it had been fu
nny, and everyone – even maybe Mr Barrington – had kind of enjoyed it.

  In the lunch hall, the dinner ladies were lined up with their silver trays and big spoons as usual. The children were all waiting to get their food as usual. Unusually, though, Mr Carter was standing in front of the dinner ladies, dressed as a chef – a proper posh old-style French one with a tall white hat and an apron and an enormous spoon.

  “OK! Good work out there on the playground!”

  “Who won, Mr Carter?” shouted Alfie Moore. “The kids or the teachers?”

  “Hmm. I’d say the tortoises. But now I know you will have built up an appetite. So I want you to enjoy your lunch. And in particular some small changes I’ve made to your lunch options!”

  This led to a buzz of chatter around the hall.

  “Morris! What day is it?” Mr Carter continued.

  “Er …”

  “Fair enough. Barry?”

  “Monday!”

  “Correct! And what’s on the menu on Monday?”

  “Stew and mash.”

  A groan mixed with an “urrrgh” went round the hall.

  “Not entirely correct. Or, at least, I would say that on the menu on Monday is not stew and mash, but … poo and mash!”

  A very big laugh went round the hall. Particularly Years One, Two and Three, for whom anything to do with poo and wee made them go mad with laughter.

  “So …” Mr Carter turned to one of the dinner ladies, a very stout one with a brick of grey hair covered in a plastic net. “If you don’t mind, Doreen …”

  “My name isn’t Doreen. It’s Lisa.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  “You just gave me a name that sounds like a dinner lady.”

  “I did. You’re absolutely right. So, Lisa … could you uncover today’s main course?”

  Lisa nodded to herself and then with a tiny bit of a flourish placed her hand on the top of her stainless-steel cover and lifted it to reveal:

  “Stew!”

  A groan of disappointment went round the room.

  “Ah. But what kind of stew is it, Lisa?” Mr Carter held up the tray. “Let me give you a clue. What’s the best thing about cake? Particularly when you or your mum – or dad, no sexism here, please – are making a cake? Anyone? Sam Green, you’ve eaten a few cakes …?”

  “Er, the mix?”

  Mr Carter put his index finger on his nose and pointed at Sam with his other index finger. Which meant that Sam had got it right. He then twirled that finger round and flicked it through the food in the tray. Which was, as it turned out …

  “Cake-mix stew!”

  All the children in the hall cheered. Mr Carter lifted his finger coated with cake-mix stew high in the air, threw his head back and opened his mouth wide. And then dived his finger into his mouth.

  “MMMMM!” he said, slurping it out again. “Delish! And to go with it?”

  Lisa lifted the top of the other stainless-steel container in front of her.

  “Mash!”

  “What kind of mash, though?”

  Lisa lifted her ice-cream scoop.

  “Ice-cream mash! Which is basically just ice cream! In the potato tray!”

  “I always hoped those ice-cream scoops would one day be used for the real thing!” said Mr Carter. He turned to another dinner lady standing further down the serving table.

  “And for dessert … Doreen?”

  “My name isn’t Doreen either. It’s L’Shaniqua!”

  “Sorry, L’Shaniqua.”

  “Well, it’s quite hard to think of a dessert that can really follow cake-mix stew and ice-cream mash.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But …”

  “But you’ve insisted. So it’s just –” she removed the top of her container with slightly less of a flourish than Lisa – “sweets. Loads of sweets. Every sweet you can think of!”

  “Including sour sweets?” queried Barry Bennett.

  “Oh yes, Barry,” said Mr Carter. “Including Haribo Tangfastics.”

  And it was, indeed, a huge tray of sweets, all still in their wrappers: Twixes and Mars bars and Boosts and Aeros and Airwaves and Chomps and Buttons and Juicy Fruits and, yes, Haribo Tangfastics, and Topics and Flakes and Drumsticks and Starbursts and Toffee Crisps and Curly Wurlys and Double Deckers and Smarties and Bountys even though no one likes them.

  That was it. There was the hugest cheer so far from the dining hall, and all the Bracket Wood pupils charged towards their lunch in a way that no teacher had ever seen before. There was a scramble for the sweets with lots of children falling over each other as they went for dessert first. It became a massive free-for-all, with no one even waiting for the dinner ladies to serve anything. Every pair of hands was just grabbing at what they could.

  “STOP!” shouted a voice very loudly.

  And the voice was so commanding, so grown-up-sounding, even though it clearly belonged to a child that, amazingly, everyone did.

  Everyone stopped grabbing sweets and looked round. At the back of the dining hall, one child had stood on a chair. It was Ryan Ward.

  “Just stop!” he continued, still sounding very grown-up. He sounded, to use quite a long and difficult word, very authoritative (like someone in authority – to make it a series of slightly smaller words). “It’s bad enough that you’re all going to eat this food. None of which is approved by Jamie Oliver!”

  A number of pupils and teachers frowned at this thought. Miss Gerard even woke up.

  “But if you ARE going to eat this junk then at least can we form a proper queue!”

  Now everyone frowned. Especially Dionna. Who, while still frowning, said, “Ryan? Are you OK?”

  He didn’t answer her. But she felt worried. He had been behaving so weirdly since coming back from hospital. And now his voice, even though it was definitely his voice, didn’t sound like him at all.

  “Yes. Good question, Dionna,” said Mr Carter. (He was the only one who wasn’t actually frowning.) “Are you OK?”

  “Yes, Mr Carter,” said Ryan, staring at him. He spoke calmly and slowly and made the words “Mr Carter” – much like in the lesson that morning he had made the words “head teacher” – sound sarcastic. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you?” said Mr Carter. “Because I think it’s perfectly fine the way lunch is going at the moment. I think everyone scrambling over each other and fighting for sweets is fun. You’re all enjoying it, aren’t you?” he added, turning to the pupils.

  “Yes!” said Morris Fawcett. Well, he actually said, “Ysbz!” because his mouth was already full of Topic.

  “OK! So, relax, Ryan!” Mr Carter went over to him. “Chill! Take a load off! Skrillax! Wind down! Loosen your goose!”

  Now everyone moved their frowns towards Mr Carter. Dionna thought, Never mind Ryan not sounding like himself, who is Mr Carter sounding like now?

  “Right … well, that’s very head-teacherly talk, isn’t it?” said Ryan. He was still standing on the chair so his eyes were at the same level as the head teacher’s. In fact, they may have been higher. For a second, at least from Dionna’s point of view, it looked like Ryan was the adult and Mr Carter was the child. “Odd, this, isn’t it? The pupil talking properly; the head teacher using stupid slang.”

  “Hey! I was using it ironically. I’d never actually say skrillax seriously!”

  “But odder still,” said Ryan, looking around, “is this whole situation. A head teacher changing the lunch menu to sweets and a pupil complaining about it. A head teacher saying, ‘Hey, let’s just have a free-for-all,’ and a pupil saying, ‘No, I think everyone should queue up quietly and properly.’ What is going on? What does everyone here think is going on?”

  The pupils looked at each other. A few murmurs of “It is a bit odd …” and “Yeah, that is kind of upside-down from normal …” were heard. Alongside one of, “Yum, I love Topics.”

  Mr Carter looked over his shoulder at the dining hall. For a second, a cloud of doubt passed across his
face, as if Ryan pointing out the strangeness of the whole thing had thrown him. But then he turned back to Ryan, smiled and said, “Not just any pupil, Ryan. The naughtiest pupil in the school. And the naughtiest pupil in the school would always go up against the head teacher. Wouldn’t they? Even if the head teacher was doing something fun and crazy and that most kids would like. Even if I gave the whole school the day off after lunch … which maybe I will!”

  “Don’t do that!” Ryan shouted.

  “You see?” said Mr Carter to the watching children. Some of them were staring at Ryan now. And not in a good way. “Or if I said that no one has to come in tomorrow either …”

  “That would be ridiculous!” shouted Ryan.

  “No, it wouldn’t!” shouted Malcolm Bailey.

  “It would be great!” shouted Sam Green.

  “We could stay at home and play on our ZX27s all day!” shouted Stirling.

  “An obscure type of old computer that only plays a tennis game from the 1970s!” shouted Scarlet.

  “You can’t just cancel school for a day and a half!” said Ryan desperately.

  “I can and just did!” bellowed Mr Carter, turning to the rest of the dining hall with both arms in the air like he’d just scored a goal. All the children cheered.

  “And now I’m cancelling HOMEWORK! FOREVER!”

  An even bigger, happier cheer went up. And then Morris Fawcett started a chant to the tune of a song called “Seven Nation Army” by a band named the White Stripes. Morris wasn’t a fan of the White Stripes, but he’d heard people chant the name of some politician to this tune on TV and he thought it sounded good. It went …

  “OH! HEADMASTER CAR-TER! OH! HEADMASTER CAR-TER!”

  Immediately, everyone joined in because of course everyone was very happy about Mr Carter’s latest ruling.

  “Oh no, really,” said Mr Carter. “No need.”

  “OH! HEADMASTER CAR-TER! OH! HEADMASTER CAR-TER!” went the whole dining hall, with most of them pointing at Mr Carter in time with the chant. Except for the Reception to Year Two children, who had no idea what was going on.

  As the song continued, Ryan seemed to shrink a little. His eye level came back down in line with Mr Carter’s, who looked at him sympathetically.