It was amazing that they managed to get all this done so quickly. But a new spirit of cooperation seemed to have entered Bracket Wood, with staff and pupils working happily together. Ryan, with Mr Carter, headed up a school council made up of the most enterprising, hardworking children there, and they helped to make sure that all the ideas of the smart new regime were actually enacted.
Amazingly, Ryan and Mr Carter were actually getting on. It was as if they both realised something. Which was that neither of them knew when – or even if – they would get back to their own bodies, but in the meantime it wouldn’t help either of them for the school to be shut down. So they might as well work together.
And since they were working together Ryan had come along on the day when Mr Carter and Dionna had gone to meet Oakcroft’s head teacher.
“COME!” said Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE.
Mr Carter looked a bit confused. They were standing outside her wood-panelled door at the end of a long wood-panelled corridor. Although there were children milling about nearby, it was terrifically silent. There was no shouting or screaming, no bumps or bangs from anyone being tripped over, or drinks spilling, or lockers being slammed. It sounded, in other words, very different from anywhere at Bracket Wood.
“She means in,” said Ryan.
“Yeah, posh people sometimes just say ‘Come!’ when they mean come in,” said Dionna.
“COME!”
“I think we’d better go in,” said Ryan.
Inside, it was even quieter than outside. The room was covered with a very plush carpet. The wood panelling was even more woody and polished than outside. It felt like the sort of room where there should be no sound except for the ticking of a grandfather clock. But since there wasn’t one of those there was no sound at all. Until it was broken by …
“AH! IT’S THE BRACKET WOOD GANG! HOORAH!”
“Oh blimey!” said Mr Carter, on realising it was Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE speaking from behind her desk. Well, a bit more than speaking.
“I BEG YOUR PARDON?”
“Well, I thought you were just speaking like that because we were on the other side of the door. But it turns out you speak like that all the time!”
“SPEAK LIKE WHAT ALL THE TIME?”
Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE was a frightening-looking woman. For a start, her hair, which she wore in a kind of standing-up wavy block, was bright orange, similar in tone to Donald Trump’s skin. Although not physically that large, she seemed to take up an enormous amount of space in the room. She wore a bright red dress that clashed very badly with her hair. And on her bosom – can I say bosom? Oh well, I have – rested a pair of glasses on a chain.
She also didn’t seem to know when she was shouting.
“Mrs Valentine-Fine—” said Ryan smoothly.
“OBE!” said Mrs Valentine-Fine. OBE.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Mrs Valentine-Fine, as I’m sure most well-informed people know,” said a voice off to one side, “has an honour bestowed personally by Her Majesty the Queen, blessed be she, for services to education.”
Ryan and Mr Carter looked over. Standing to one side were a girl and a boy. They were presumably Year Sixes, but looked much older. The girl was tall with a sharp, beaky nose and short hair worn in a stern side parting. She was standing with her arms folded, staring directly at them. The boy, even taller, had long blond hair and was standing with one arm up against the wall of the head teacher’s room, as if he was a model. “Yuh. She got it for, like, being amazeballs at teaching stuff. I mean, my great-aunt really told her she was, like, the best.”
“Your great-aunt?” said Mr Carter.
“Oh, soz. My great-aunt is, like, Her Maj. Like, Liz Two. Like, Send Her Victorious, Happy and whatevs.”
“And,” said the girl, as Mr Carter and Ryan stared open-mouthed, “Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE therefore prefers to be addressed as Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE.”
“I DO! THAT IS CORRECT. THANK YOU, BELINDA. THANK YOU, TOBY!” said Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE, picking up her glasses off her bosom – oh no, I’ve said it again! – and putting them on her nose as if to peer more carefully at these strange visitors. “NOW. WHAT CAN WE DO FOR YOU?”
“Well,” said Ryan, “I think our head can explain. Can’t you, Mr Carter?”
“That bloke is the queen’s nephew?” said Mr Carter.
“Great-nephew. Apparently. Anyway, can’t you, Mr Carter?”
“What?”
“Oh, heavens. Explain. What we are doing here.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Mr Carter turned to Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE. “We’d like to challenge you to a debate!”
“SORRY?”
“You. V us. A debate. At our place, Monday next week. Judged by OFFHEAD. What do you say?”
Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE frowned. She looked over at Belinda and Toby, who frowned as well. Then she said, “WELL, I THINK WHAT WE WOULD SAY IS …”
And together they all went …
“HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!”
They all finished at the same time, which was quite impressive. Mr Carter and Ryan looked at each other.
“What, just that?” said Mr Carter. “Laughing?”
“AH HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!”
Although this time they didn’t finish on quite the same beat. “HA! HA … like, HA!” went Toby.
“I’M SO SORRY, MR CARTER. I DON’T MEAN TO LAUGH, BUT THIS SCHOOL HAS WON THE NATIONAL SCHOOLS’ DEBATING CHAMPIONSHIP FIFTEEN YEARS RUNNING! AND BRACKET WOOD IS … WELL … BRACKET WOOD. YOU KNOW?”
Mr Carter looked at her. Inside, the boy who’d gone to Bracket Wood for the last six years, and who had spent most of that time pranking teachers and making fun of it, felt strangely angry.
“No,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean!”
“And neither,” said Ryan, standing side by side with him, “do I!”
Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE took off her glasses and replaced them on her you-know-where. She raised an eyebrow, unused to being challenged in any way. She stood up as if she was going to tell them both off. But before she could open her mouth to speak, Belinda said, “What about you, Dionna?”
Everyone looked round. At that point, Mr Carter realised that Dionna had not said a word since they’d come in to the office. She was deliberately looking down, not at Belinda. Who continued, with a sly smile on her face.
“Dionna? It is you, isn’t it? Dionna Baxter? Who used to go here?”
“Oh, what, Bels?” said Toby. “The scholarship girl? Is that her? The one with the mum from Nigeria? But not like a princess or anything, just literally from Nigeria? Kra-Kra!”
“DIONNA! HOW WONDERFUL! AND YOU OF COURSE WERE ACTUALLY A JUNIOR MEMBER OF OUR DEBATING TEAM. BEFORE YOU SADLY … HAD TO LEAVE!”
“Yes, that was very sad,” said Belinda, but she didn’t look at all sad. “Are you happier now, Dionna? At … what’s it called again, Tobes?”
“Placket Hood?”
“Yes. Are you happier at Placket Hood?”
Mr Carter and Ryan exchanged glances. But Dionna looked up slowly and met Belinda’s eye. And said calmly, “I am, Belinda, thank you. Perfectly happy. Although …”
“Yes?” said Belinda, looking as if she was eager to hear this.
“… not as happy as I will be when me and the rest of the BRACKET WOOD debating team take you and minor-royal-face here down! See you next week!”
With that she was gone, through the oak-panelled door. Which was kind of awkward for Mr Carter and Ryan, who were left there, not quite knowing what to do.
Eventually, Ryan coughed and said, “OK, yes. Well. There we are. Goodbye, then.”
“Yeah,” said Mr Carter. “Bye.”
And the two of them shuffled out.
After Mr Carter, Dionna and Ryan had left Oakcroft, nothing happened for a bit. They thought that maybe Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE had decided not to pick up the challenge.
But then a message came through to the school by email.
T
his was it:
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Dear Mr Carter,
It was very kind of you to come to my office yesterday and challenge our school to a debate. We have considered it and our answer is yes. Our only stipulation is that the motion should be:
This House Believes that Bracket Wood School is Rubbish.
Our school will be proposing the motion and you will be opposing it. I hope this is suitable for your purposes.
Yours truly,
Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE
After he read this, Mr Carter thought about writing back a very rude message indeed. (It occurred to him that since he was now, as far as most people knew, a grown-up, he could use some very grown-up swear words without anyone telling him off.) However, he talked it over with Dionna, who said, “Yeah, you’re right, they’re just taking the mickey – even more reason to wipe the floor with them!”
So, with her looking over his shoulder, he wrote back, saying:
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Dear Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE,
Thanks for your email. Yeah. OK. That motion is fine. More than fine. Brilliant.
Yours sincerely,
Mr Carter
PS BUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUMBUM.
PPS Sorry, I think my computer has been hacked.
By your mum.
Dionna did think about saying to him Might be better if you cut the PS and the PPS, but then thought, Naaah.
They laughed a lot, and carried on laughing right up until they realised that they would have to stage some auditions to find a second member of the Debating Team apart from Dionna.
“This House believes …”
“My house? My house doesn’t believe anything. It’s made of brick.”
Dionna looked despairingly at Mr Carter, who looked back and tried to smile as if things were not so bad. But it did look as if things were pretty bad. Morris Fawcett was the fifteenth child who’d come in following the putting up of a sign in the corridor that said:
DEBATING TEAM AUDITIONS, 1.15PM.
And it wasn’t going well.
“No, Morris,” said Dionna. “It’s not your actual house.”
“Well, why did you say it was?”
“I didn’t. I said, ‘This House’.”
“Oh.” Morris frowned and looked around. “It’s not a house, though. It’s a school.”
Dionna put her head in her hands.
Mr Carter said, “OK, thanks, Morris. We’ll let you know.”
“You’ll let me know what?”
“Just go.”
Morris nodded as if he’d heard these words often, and did so.
“What are we going to do?” said Dionna after the door had shut.
“Well, he isn’t the cleverest pupil in the school.”
“You can say that again.”
“Well, he isn’t the clever—”
“Please don’t do that joke.”
“No, fair enough. But some of the others haven’t been that bad.”
Dionna looked down at the notes she’d been taking.
“Scarlet and Stirling: have created a debate app that could do it for us. When asked, will it be ready by Monday, they replied, ‘No, we are waiting for legal permission, which won’t come through until we are sixteen.’ In nine years’ time for Stirling.”
“Yes, but—”
“Malcolm Bailey: very good on impressions of animals. Not so good at debating.”
“Hmm.”
“Alfie Moore: seems to think he can win just by shouting, ‘I’ll do what I like!’”
“Yes, that was odd.”
“Caspar, Reception: mainly interested in singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’.” She looked up. “I’ve written possible and a question mark next to him. Things are that bad.”
“Yeah. OK. You’re right. They’ve all been terrible. The debate is on Monday. That’s when OFFHEAD is coming back. And today is Friday. What are we going to do?”
She shook her head.
Then the door opened and through the door came Ryan. “How’s it going?” he said.
Mr Carter and Dionna looked at each other.
And smiled.
“I’m still not sure about this,” said Ryan as he and Dionna waited in a little room behind the assembly-hall stage on Monday afternoon.
“Oh, not now, Mr Carter,” she replied. “We’ve been over this.”
And they had. Ryan – or rather, Mr Carter-inside-Ryan – had been very against the idea. The idea, that is, of him being the second player on the Bracket Wood Debating Team, which had occurred to Dionna and Mr Carter simultaneously as he’d walked through the door.
His point was that it was cheating. That he, though presently occupying the body of an eleven-year-old boy, was actually a forty-three-year-old man – a very strict, play-by-the-rules forty-three-year-old head teacher, in fact – and so he was not comfortable with the idea that they would have an unfair advantage.
Dionna had answered by looking up the rules of debating, which, it was true, contained nothing about a member of a school team being an adult in reality.
Mr Carter (in Ryan’s body) countered that the age limit was twelve.
Ryan (in Mr Carter’s body) countered that he, Ryan, was eleven.
Mr Carter (you get the idea) replied, “Yes, but I’m actually me. Mr Carter.”
And Ryan had said, “Well, Mr C, I think there’s a little bit of all of us in all of us.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Mr Carter (in Ryan’s body).
“Yes, what does it mean?” said Dionna. “Is it a Taylor Swift lyric?”
“Well, OK, maybe I wasn’t really thinking what it meant when I said it,” said Ryan (in Mr Carter’s body). “But –” he continued, looking very closely at the body that had previously been his – “I am beginning to wonder where I start and you end. Whether we aren’t just turning into each other.”
When he’d said this, both of them felt a little frightened. So maybe, just to ward off the idea that this was it, that Mr Carter and Ryan had swapped places permanently, Mr Carter – in Ryan’s voice, obviously – said, “OK, OK. I’ll be on the debating team.”
Which might be why he was now saying he wasn’t sure about it. After all, it wasn’t a very strong argument. Which is a bit of a problem when you’re about to take part in a debate.
“Well, Mr Carter, I have to say we are quite impressed,” said Mr Mann, taking his seat in the front row of the assembly hall. The whole school sat behind them, waiting.
“Yes,” said Miss Malik, who had her notebook out. “Look at what I’ve ticked. Food. Behaviour (in class, playground and corridor). Teaching.”
“Thank you,” said Mr Barrington, who was sitting behind.
“I wasn’t sure about him, actually,” whispered Miss Malik, “but everyone else was fine.”
“Toilets?” said Mr Carter.
“Even toilets.”
“I’d be happy to use them myself,” said Mr Mann. “Well, not happy, as I’d have to squat in a very uncomfortable way and frankly my legs aren’t what they were. But clean as a whistle.”
“Well … great,” said Mr Carter.
“But obviously,” Mr Mann continued, “that just brings you up to scratch. What we’re looking for, always, is that little bit extra!”
Mr Carter nodded enthusiastically, knowing that’s what the real Mr Carter would have been doing in the circumstances.
“Yes,” he said. “And that’s why, to really show how Bracket Wood has improved since last time, we thought we’d organise this – a debate!”
“A debate!” said Miss Malik, writing it down in her notebook. “What a good idea.”
“Thank you! Would you mind being the judges?”
“Not a
t all.”
“Indeed not,” said Mr Mann. “I love a debate! Excellent! What’s the motion?”
“Er …” said Mr Carter, pointing at the stage where a banner hung saying:
“Oh …” said Mr Mann.
“Oh …” said Miss Malik.
“Yes, it occurs to me just now, for the first time,” said Mr Carter, “that from your point of view that isn’t a very helpful motion. But – you know – we’ll be speaking against it, obviously.”
“I see,” said Miss Malik. “Well, I suppose if you win, that’ll be all to the good.”
“Hm,” said Mr Mann. “Against whom are you debating?”
“Oak—” Mr Carter began.
“MR MANN! MISS MALIK! HOW WONDERFUL TO SEE YOU AGAIN! PARTICULARLY AFTER YOU JUST GAVE US OUR FIFTH RANKING IN A ROW OF OUTSTANDING!”
Mr Carter looked up from his seat to see Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE standing in front of the OFFHEAD inspectors with outstretched arms.
Behind her stood Belinda, Toby and a large group of immaculately uniformed Oakcroft pupils.
“Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE!” said Mr Mann, getting up.
“PLEASE. CALL ME SHIRLEY.”
“Shirley!”
“BUT STILL OBE!”
“Sorry, OBE.”
“AND SO GOOD THAT YOU’RE HERE! AFTER ALL, I REMEMBER BACK IN 1977 WHEN YOU – BRIAN – WERE CAPTAIN OF OUR DEBATING TEAM!”
“Oh, Shirley OBE. I thought you’d have forgotten!”
And Mr Mann gave Mrs Valentine-Fine OBE an enormous hug.
“—croft,” finished Mr Carter. But no one really heard him.
“Oh, blimey,” said Mr Carter, coming into the backstage area, “I think things might be more difficult than we expected out there!”
“And not just out there,” said Dionna, pointing at Ryan. “He’s been saying he’s not sure about being on the team again.”
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