by Judi Curtin
‘Did you get any of that?’ I asked when the woman was gone.
‘I got the first bit,’ said Beth. ‘And after that I couldn’t keep track any more.’
‘And since when was there a water pump anywhere around here?’
‘I guess we should go as far as the bridge, and ask again?’
But before we even got to the bridge, Beth stopped suddenly.
‘OMG!’ she said. ‘At last I know where we are. Look – there’s our school.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I think.’
It had to be our school, but … it looked too new and shiny and strange. It was smaller than it’s supposed to be. The car park was a hockey pitch, and the science lab was a bed of red and yellow roses.
‘This is so cool,’ said Beth. ‘I’d love to see what our school was like in the olden days. Let’s peep in a window.’
I really wanted to get going to Orchard House, but Beth was right – it would be cool to see what our school looked like long before we got there.
‘I guess,’ I said. ‘But it’s August, remember? School will be closed so there won’t be much to see.’
‘Exactly!’ said Beth. ‘One quick look in the window and then we can get pack to our mission.’
I followed her through the gates and along the driveway, (which was gravel instead of tarmac.)
We peeped through the first window we came to. In the classroom, a teacher in a long black cloak was writing on a blackboard, and lines of girls were copying her words into notebooks.
‘OMG!’ said Beth as the two of us ducked down behind a bush. ‘School’s open. I don’t get it.’
‘Hang on a sec,’ I said, picking a thorn from my finger. ‘Remember when those kids wrote the history of the school last year? Didn’t they say that it was a private school, back in the day? And that only girls came here? And that it was different to all the other schools around here?’
‘Yeah, I remember that.’
‘So maybe they had different holidays?’
‘Yikes! Poor them. Imagine having to go to school in August?’
‘Anyway, if school’s open, I think we need to get out of here, fast. I think we need––’
‘Goodness gracious me! I cannot believe my eyes. Get up from there and act like young ladies.’
Beth and I turned around to see a familiar, very cross-looking woman staring at us.
‘Miss Gallagher?’ I said as Beth and I stood up and dusted bits of grass off our clothes.
I shut my eyes for a second, trying to do the sums in my head. Could my maths teacher (the scariest teacher in the world) have been a teacher in 1960? Wouldn’t that make her something like a hundred and fifty years old?
‘Mrs Gallagher,’ said the woman, and then I remembered our maths teacher boasting that her mum had been a teacher in our school too. This was getting very weird very fast. Did our maths teacher learn all her scary tricks from her mother?
‘Stand up straight and look at me while I’m speaking to you,’ said Mrs Gallagher.
I could feel my hands starting to shake. Beth squeezed my arm. It was nice of her, but her hand was shaking too, so I didn’t feel a whole lot better.
‘What are your names?’ asked Mrs Gallagher, pointing her bony finger at us.
‘Er … I’m Molly,’ I said. ‘And this is Beth.’
‘First years,’ I presume,’ said Mrs Gallagher. ‘I haven’t had time to get to know you all yet – but mark my words – I’ll remember you two – I’ve never seen such a display – rolling in the earth like cornerboys.’
I had no clue what a cornerboy was, and Beth and I hadn’t been rolling around on the earth anyway, but it didn’t look like Mrs Gallagher was up for a reasonable debate.
‘Er … we’re sorry,’ said Beth.
‘And what on earth has happened to your uniforms?’
Nothing had happened to our uniforms. I was wearing my skirt and my jumper with the proper crest. My shirt was buttoned up properly, and my tie was tied. Even mean old Mr Heaslip, the head of the uniform police in our school would have been happy.
But then I looked in the window again and saw that, like us, the girls inside were wearing green uniforms – but theirs were totally weird and old-fashioned.
‘Er … we …’ I began, before I realised that we weren’t actually supposed to answer the question.
‘WHERE ARE YOUR GYMSLIPS?’ Now Mrs Gallagher’s face was going red. She didn’t look like she’d want to hear the story about Rico and Graham and Jeanie. She didn’t look like she’d listen to our explanation that we weren’t supposed to be in first year for nearly sixty years.
‘Er … we didn’t know gym class was on now,’ said Beth. ‘We …’
‘Your insolence is astounding,’ said Mrs Gallagher, grabbing Beth and me by our arms. ‘You can report for detention later, but now it’s time for your Latin class – and if you haven’t learned your verbs you will be in very hot water indeed.’
Chapter Ten
Mrs Gallagher dragged us in the front door, and through the big space where the library is supposed to be. My arm was hurting and I wondered if that kind of stuff was supposed to be OK in 1960.
Finally Mrs Gallagher let go of our arms to open a classroom door, and then she practically pushed us inside.
When the girls saw the teacher they all stood up – ‘Good morning, Mrs Gallagher,’ they said in a chorus. They were all wearing ugly uniforms and staring at Beth and me like we were aliens.
‘Go and find a desk – near the front – where I can keep an eye on you,’ said Mrs Gallagher, pushing us away from her.
I rubbed my arm wondering if I’d be taking the print of her fingers back to the present with me. Then I followed Beth to an empty desk in the second row. I thought about sitting down, but changed my mind when I noticed that everyone else was still standing up.
Everyone said a prayer together, and then Mrs Gallagher said, ‘You may sit.’
For the first time I looked properly at the desk Beth and I had chosen. It was huge and heavy, like something out of a museum. The seat was joined onto the desk, and looked really narrow. Was this some kind of 1960s torture? Was it designed so there was no way you could fall asleep in class? Did girls in 1960 have smaller bums than us?
Beth and I were just trying to balance ourselves on the narrow seat when I heard the girl next to us laughing.
‘You two are hilarious,’ she said.
She didn’t sound mean, but I don’t like being laughed at when I have no idea what I’ve done wrong. Then I heard a series of loud bangs and I noticed that everyone else was flipping their narrow seats down, so even though they still looked hard and uncomfortable, they were at least wide enough to sit on properly. Beth and I copied everyone else and I tried not to feel totally stupid as we sat down.
‘Who knew 1960s desks could be so complicated?’ said Beth, making me feel a small bit better. ‘They should come with an instruction manual.’
Mrs Gallagher was at the top of the room, taking a big stack of books out of a cupboard.
‘Hey,’ whispered the girl who’d been laughing at us. ‘I’ve never seen you two before. Where on earth did you come from?’
‘Er … we’re new,’ said Beth. ‘Today’s our first day.’
Then I remembered what Mrs Gallagher had said about gymslips. I didn’t figure that 1960 gym would be a whole lot of fun, but Latin sounded totally scary. And I so didn’t like what Mrs Gallagher had said about verbs and hot water.
‘Aren’t we supposed to be at gym class now?’ I said.
‘Gym class?’ said the girl. ‘What’s that? And why do you think we should be there?’
‘Because the teacher said we should be wearing gymslips.’
The girl laughed in my face, which was a bit rude.
‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.
The girl pointed at her ugly uniform with its belt and fat pleats. ‘This is a gymslip,’ she said. ‘And we wear it to every lesson – except not to gym, bec
ause I haven’t got the foggiest idea what that is. What kind of uniforms are you two wearing?’
‘Why didn’t we plan this better?’ I whispered to Beth. ‘We should have known that our regular school uniforms would make us stand out too much in the past.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ whispered Beth back, giggling. ‘We definitely should have worn those 1960s uniforms we keep at the back of our wardrobes for times like these.’
The girl was staring at us like we were aliens. ‘Where did you say you came from again?’ she asked.
We come from a place about two kilometres and fifty years away.
‘Er … we come from …’, began Beth, but before she could finish, Mrs Gallagher banged on her desk.
‘Silence!’ she shouted, and immediately everyone stopped talking. ‘Take out your homework,’ she said, ‘and you shall take turns to call out the answers.’
All the girls started to dig around in their weird old-fashioned schoolbags.
I tapped the girl next to me. ‘We haven’t got any homework. What are we supposed to do?’
The girl smiled at us. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she whispered. ‘Now that Mrs Gallagher’s sitting down, she won’t move any more. Here, you can have my English and Domestic Science homework. Just open any old page – Mrs G won’t check.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘By the way, I’m Molly, and this is Beth.’
The girl leaned over and shook our hands, like we were making a deal or something. ‘I’m Rita,’ she said. ‘Rita Walshe.’
‘OMG!’ said Beth. ‘You’re …’
Suddenly I could see past the girl’s pigtails and her shapeless school uniform. I managed to see the same girl – except much older and prettier, wearing really cool clothes and with her hair tied up in a fancy bun.
‘OMG!’ I said too. ‘I don’t believe it. You’re Rita Walshe – the famous opera singer. My granny loves your records. She even went to see you once in …’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ said Rita, going red. ‘I like to sing, but I’d never in my wildest dreams imagine that … I don’t like singing in public … I’m too shy to even join the school choir. I never … I simply couldn’t …’
I so badly wanted to tell her the wonderful future that was waiting for her – but how could I? How could I even begin to explain what I knew and how I knew it? So I just smiled at our new friend.
‘You should believe in yourself,’ I said. ‘And one day I’m sure you’ll go on to wonderful things. One day you might even …’
Suddenly Mrs Gallagher slammed a book on the table and everyone stopped whispering. ‘Homework time,’ she said. ‘Question one – why don’t you start, Molly?’
I jumped. Mrs Gallagher was staring at me like she knew I was going to fail. She was half-smiling like she was dying to give me a totally cruel 1960s punishment. I looked down at the open exercise book in front of me. There was lots of beautiful handwriting in it, but it looked like a recipe. I didn’t know much about Latin, but I guessed the ingredient list for the gross-sounding Russian Fish Pie wasn’t going to help me a whole lot.
Then Rita poked me in the arm. ‘Amo – amas – amat,’ she whispered.
It sounded like a Hogwarts spell, but what did I know?
‘Er … a mo … a mas … a mat,’ I said.
‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Gallagher, looking disappointed. ‘But be a bit quicker next time. Now Beth, can you share your answer to question two with us?’
‘O farmer, you see the church,’ whispered Rita.
She had to be kidding, but Beth said the words and Mrs Gallagher nodded. ‘Question three, Eleanor,’ she said. ‘And get a move on. We’d like to have this homework corrected before 1961.’
* * *
The next forty minutes were the most boring of my whole entire life. School so wasn’t fun back in 1960. As soon as all the homework was corrected, the teacher called out lists of words, and the girls repeated them after her, like well-trained parrots. Next, Mrs Gallagher wrote loads of stuff on the blackboard, and the girls spent twenty minutes copying it into their notebooks.
‘This is such a waste of time,’ whispered Beth as the two of us pretended to write into Rita’s exercise books. ‘Couldn’t the teacher just photocopy all this stuff and give it to us?’
‘Or give us a link so we could look it up online?’ I suggested. ‘We’ve only been here for an hour, but I miss the present so much.’
A few minutes later, a bell rang. Everyone closed their books and we all stood up and said another prayer.
When Mrs Gallagher left the room, Rita turned to Beth and me.
‘It’s lunchtime now,’ she said. ‘And afterwards we’ve got music appreciation and history. We can sit together if you like – and I can help you with the things you don’t know.’
She was being really nice, but Rita had no clue that for Beth and me, that very minute was ancient history – and that none of the music we appreciated had been written yet.
‘Lunch with Rita sounds fun,’ said Beth. ‘What do you think, Molly?’
Beth was probably right – it would have been cool to hang out with Rita – but I so didn’t want to spend any more time in a 1960 classroom, and lunchbreak was probably the best time for Beth and me to escape.
‘Er … we’re only meant to be here for a half-day today, remember, Beth?’ I said. ‘And we’ve got that thing … you know … that thing with Jeanie to sort out … so maybe …’
‘Molly’s right,’ said Beth. ‘Thanks, Rita, but we need to go now.’
‘I’ll walk you to the gate, and I’ll save you a seat in Domestic Science tomorrow, shall I?’ said Rita.
Now I felt really mean. What was Rita going to think when Beth and I failed to show up – ever again?
‘Er, we might not be here tomorrow,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ said Beth. ‘We’re sort of trying out a few schools.’
‘Oh,’ said Rita, looking disappointed. ‘I hope you choose this one. I think you’d love it – especially as it’s so modern.’
‘It might not happen this year,’ I said. ‘But sometime in the future, we’ll definitely be back.’
Beth and I followed Rita out the door and along the corridor. All the girls we passed were very quiet and polite – so quiet it didn’t really feel like a proper school.
‘Oh,’ said Rita as she opened the front door. ‘Mrs Gallagher is on gate duty.’
‘Gate duty?’ said Beth. ‘I’m not sure I like the sound of that.’
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Rita. ‘Mrs Gallagher just stands there to make sure the wild girls don’t sneak out to the shop to buy comics during lunchtime.’
What would Ruth say if she knew that twenty-first-century wild girls did worse things than sneaking out to buy comics?
‘Anyway,’ continued Ruth. ‘You two have got permission to leave so …’
I gulped. I so didn’t want that scary teacher dragging Beth and me into the school for the second time that day.
What if she locked us up and we never got to escape?
‘Er …I think our parents might have talked to a different teacher,’ I said. ‘And Mrs Gallagher mightn’t know that we’re supposed to leave early.’
‘And we wouldn’t want to cause a scene or anything,’ added Beth.
Rita looked confused for a second, and then she smiled.
‘I can show you a place where it’s easy to climb over the back wall,’ she said. ‘Mrs G will never see you there.’
‘Know what, Rita?’ I said. ‘You’re a star now, and you’ll be a star in the future.’
Now Rita looked at me like I’d gone totally crazy, but she didn’t say anything as she led us around the side of the building and showed us how to escape from school.
Chapter Eleven
Half an hour later Beth and I turned a corner and saw a sign: ‘Orchard Road’.
‘At last!’ I said.
‘But this can’t be right,’ said Beth. ‘Where’s the super
market? And the phone shop? And the nail bar?’
She was right. Orchard Road is supposed to be part of the town – but this place was like a country road, with trees and fields and even a few sheep and cows.
‘I guess a lot has changed since 1960,’ I said.
The two of us walked along. It was totally weird, being in a place we should know so well, even though it felt like we’d never been there before. Finally we turned a bend and saw the familiar tall gates and red brick walls of Orchard House.
‘Now what?’ I asked. ‘Do we have a plan?’
Before Beth could answer, we heard the ‘squeak-squeak’ sound of a badly oiled bike coming along the road.
‘The plan is, we have no idea who’s coming, so we hide,’ I said, as I grabbed Beth and pulled her behind a large bush.
A second later, the ‘squeak-squeak’ was really close. Beth and I peeped through the leaves just in time to see a boy cycling through the gates. He was wearing shorts that looked like a man’s suit with half the legs cut off, and a jumper that looked like it had been hand knitted in the dark. His hair was short at the back and slicked down in the front.
‘OMG!’ whispered Beth. ‘Is that …? Could it be …?’
‘It’s Graham,’ I said. ‘Isn’t he adorable?’
‘He’s totally adorable,’ said Beth. ‘And it looks like we’re on time. I guess he’s calling for Jeanie, so they can spend the day together. Wouldn’t it be cool to hang out with them for a while? We could do all the things Graham said were such fun and we could give Jeanie a few warnings about climbing trees, and—’
‘And it probably wouldn’t make any difference,’ I said. ‘You’re right, though. I guess we have to try. But quick – he’s getting away. Let’s follow him.’
* * *
Beth and I didn’t want to walk on the noisy gravel, so we had to go the long way around on the grass. By the time we got near the back door, it looked like Graham had been there for a while. Beth and I ducked behind a tree and listened.
‘Where’s Jeanie?’ whispered Beth. ‘Why isn’t she coming out?’
Then I heard the sound of a woman’s voice.