The Porridge of Knowledge

by Archie Kimpton

  ‘Why should I care?’ she wailed. ‘Every day I come into this classroom and give you one hundred and ninety-nine per cent. And what do I get back? Nothing.’

  She reached into her desk drawer and took out a pile of books. ‘Fenella Frat, come up to the front, please.’

  Fenella wiped her nose on her sleeve and did as she was told.

  ‘Hand out these books,’ ordered Ms Cerise.

  Again, Fenella did as she was told, going up and down the classroom, putting a book on each desk. Milk picked up her copy. It was a fat, grey book entitled Advanced Maths for Really Clever People, by Syd Thicke. Milk opened her copy and flicked through it. Page after page of equations, diagrams and mathematical problems loomed back at her. The book really was as advanced as the title suggested.

  ‘If you refuse to listen to me in class, then you can teach yourselves at home,’ went on Ms Cerise. A cruel grin twisted the corners of her mouth towards the ceiling. ‘Over the weekend you will study chapters one, two and three of Syd Thicke’s excellent book. First thing Monday morning I will be testing you on what you have learnt. If any of you fail this test, I will do everything in my powers to make your life in this school as miserable as possible. And that’s a promise.’

  Ms Cerise stood up, picked up her marker pen and flounced over to the whiteboard. ‘And if you are in any doubt why I’m doing this, then let me make it crystal clear.’

  In big blue letters, she wrote on the whiteboard:

  IT’S ALL MILK’S FAULT.

  Everyone groaned, glaring at Milk. Their weekend was ruined.

  ‘But Miss,’ pleaded Milk, ‘there’s no need to punish everybody. That’s not fair.’

  But Ms Cerise was unmoved. In her sweetest, little-girliest voice she said, ‘Seeing as I’m not totally heartless, you can all make a head start on your weekend reading. Open your books to page one. I’m sure you’ll find Mr Thicke’s explanation of logarithms absolutely fascinating.’

  Milk’s day only got worse.

  After school she hurried back to Carp’s Café hoping to find it open. But it was just as it had been that morning; blinds shut tight and no sign of Jarvis. Worse still, further along the promenade, she counted six coaches parked outside Café Smoooth. As the excited holidaymakers clambered out, the Mayor greeted each one with a friendly handshake, directing them towards the entrance of Café Smoooth.

  So it was true. Even the Mayor was supporting the new café. It seemed like everyone had completely forgotten about Jarvis.

  To top it all, it started to rain. Milk pulled her hood over her head and picked up her schoolbag. At first she couldn’t figure out why it was much heavier than usual. But then she remembered she was carrying Advanced Maths for Really Clever People, and her mood sank even lower.

  CHAPTER 11

  PINK MASH AND PARMESAN

  Grandad ambled into Milk’s bedroom carrying the telephone.

  ‘Morning Grandad,’ yawned Milk. She turned and looked at the clock beside her bed. It was only just after six o’clock. ‘You’re up early.’

  ‘I’ve been washing the car,’ replied Grandad, sitting down on the end of her bed.

  ‘But we haven’t got a car.’

  ‘Haven’t we? That’s a shame. I waxed it too.’

  Milk liked talking to Grandad when she was half asleep. In those few drowsy moments she felt as comfortably befuddled as him.

  ‘Maybe you were washing the cat,’ she suggested.

  Grandad thought for a moment. ‘No, no, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t washing the cat. Though that’s a very good idea. Have you smelt his breath recently? It smells like blue cheese.’

  Slowly, he got up and headed towards the door. ‘I better go and wash the car then.’

  Just as he was leaving, Milk noticed the telephone in his hand. ‘Grandad, why have you got the telephone?’

  ‘What telephone?’ came the somewhat inevitable answer.

  ‘The one in your hand.’

  Grandad lifted his empty hand up to his face, examining it back and front for any trace of telephone.

  ‘In your other hand,’ smiled Milk. She sometimes wondered if Grandad really was that confused or if he just enjoyed playing tricks on her. Then again, he did seem genuinely surprised when he discovered the telephone in his other hand.

  ‘Oh! Yes! There’s a call for you,’ he said, passing the phone to Milk.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Milk, pressing the phone to her ear. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Milk? Milk? Can you hear me? It’s me, Jarvis. You’ve got to come over quick. Something amazing has happened. You’ve got to see it. It’s incredible!’

  ‘Slow down,’ urged Milk, sitting up in bed. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I can’t explain over the phone. Just come. As quick as you can.’

  And with that he hung up.

  Milk dressed as fast as she could and ran downstairs. In the kitchen sink, Grandad was already cleaning the cat’s teeth with a paintbrush. ‘She wouldn’t let me brush her teeth unless I got in the sink with her,’ explained Grandad, his long legs tucked up around his chin.

  ‘She’s a very lucky cat,’ grinned Milk, going up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. ‘I’ll see you later. I’ll be at Carp’s Café if you need me.’

  As she hurried down the hill, Milk saw Mr Frat standing outside his house in his pyjamas. ‘Do you know anything about this?’ he growled, pointing at his car. It was sparkling clean and beautifully waxed. It looked as good as new. ‘Who’s been cleaning my car?’

  ‘Maybe it was the fairies,’ suggested Milk, skipping by.

  ‘Rubbish,’ he snorted, giving his bum a good scratch. ‘And I heard you got your whole class in trouble too. Got them all extra homework. You should learn to keep your big mouth shut.’

  Milk ignored him. In the upstairs window she spotted Frank and Fenella Frat, their sad faces steaming up the glass. Milk waved at them. Limply, they waved back before sliding back into the shadows.

  Jarvis was waiting for her outside the café. His puffy cheeks were flushed pink with excitement. ‘Quick, come inside.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Milk. She could feel butterflies building up in her stomach. ‘What’s going on?’

  He took her hand and led her inside the café, locking the door behind him.

  Jarvis spoke quickly, the words tumbling out of his mouth like alphabet soup. ‘When I came back from Café Smoooth the other night I felt terrible. I thought I was finished. I thought Carp’s Café was finished. I stayed in bed all night and all day yesterday. I heard you calling for me, but I didn’t want to see anyone. I’m sorry, Milk.’

  ‘That’s all right. I was worried, that’s all. He’s a horrible man, that Mr Blanket. Did you see his teeth?’

  ‘Like a horse with a toffee,’ said Jarvis with a smile. ‘Anyhow, when I got up this morning, I thought I’d better clean up the kitchen. I hadn’t been in there since we tried to make that porridge.’

  Milk had never seen Jarvis like this before. He was jittery, pacing up and down.

  ‘And that’s when I found …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In there,’ he said, pointing towards the kitchen.

  ‘What is it?’

  At last, he stopped pacing. ‘Take a look for yourself.’

  Milk crossed the café and put her hand out to part the beaded curtains. She heard a faint scratching and scuttling sound, the same sound she had heard the previous morning. She turned and looked at Jarvis, who nodded, reassuring her it was safe to go in.

  It was incredible!

  Ants, thousands of them, swarmed all over the kitchen. They were everywhere, scurrying across the floor, over the surfaces, pouring in and out of the fridge and the cupboards.

  ‘What are they doing?’ gasped Milk, putting her hand over her mouth.

  ‘They’re building,’ replied Jarvis, pointing towards the far side of the kitchen.

  Rising from the worktop was a three-foot-high replica of the Eiffel Tower, made entirely
out of Parmesan cheese. Ants hurried up and down the side of the tall yellow structure, squashing pieces of cheese into place, perfectly recreating the iron lattice tower in every detail. It was magnificent.

  ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ said Jarvis, giving Milk a nudge.

  Milk was dumbstruck. Eventually, she stuttered, ‘How do they know what they’re doing?’

  ‘They’re copying,’ replied Jarvis, pointing to the picture of the Eiffel Tower on the wall. ‘Every now and again you can see them looking at it.’

  This was perhaps the craziest thing she had ever heard. Ants can’t copy from pictures. She looked at Jarvis to see if he was pulling her leg.

  ‘I’m not joking,’ insisted Jarvis. ‘See for yourself.’

  Milk concentrated on a single ant climbing the Eiffel Tower. Sure enough, just as it reached the tallest point, the ant stopped and turned its head to look at the picture. After a moment’s thought, the ant carefully positioned its tiny piece of Parmesan cheese, gently squashing it into place with its two back legs.

  ‘You’re right! I saw it looking!’ squealed Milk, jumping up and down. ‘It’s amazing!’

  ‘There’s something else,’ said Jarvis. ‘Follow me.’

  Ants scurried around their feet as they shuffled, inch by inch, towards the open fridge.

  ‘Look at this,’ whispered Jarvis, pushing opening the fridge door a little wider.

  An orderly trail of ants led up to the third shelf of the fridge and into a large plastic bowl. The trail re-emerged on the other side of the bowl with each ant carrying a tiny piece of pink, fluffy stuff squidged on its back.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Milk, leaning into the fridge.

  ‘Mashed potato,’ replied Jarvis. ‘I made it the other day to go with the eel and spicy pineapple pie.’

  ‘But why is it pink?’

  ‘That’s what I wondered. But then I saw this.’

  He pointed at a little bottle that lay on its side next to the bowl of mashed potato. The lid was off and the bottle was empty.

  ‘It’s red food colouring,’ explained Jarvis. ‘The ants must have found it in the cupboard, carried it across the kitchen, unscrewed the lid and poured it into the mashed potato.’

  Milk started to giggle. It was all so fantastically strange.

  ‘But why do they want pink mashed potato?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ll see,’ grinned Jarvis.

  They followed the trail of ants out of the bowl, back down to the floor and round behind the fridge door. That’s when she saw it: a pink mashed potato replica of the Taj Mahal. It was as tall as Milk’s waist and as wide as Jarvis’s tummy and decorated with hundreds of tiny pieces of orange and lemon peel. It was just as it was in Jarvis’s picture.

  ‘Jarvis,’ gasped Milk. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘They’re building the pyramids here,’ said Jarvis, pointing at a rising pile of sugar cubes. ‘And if you were here earlier you would have seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa made out of butter.’ He pointed at a pool of yellow liquid dripping off the surface next to the microwave. ‘I guess it must have melted.’

  ‘But they’re ants. How are they doing it?’

  In a way, Milk already knew the answer. But it seemed so ridiculous, so impossible, that she daren’t say it out loud.

  ‘I think the ants must have eaten the Porridge of Knowledge and it’s made them … clever.’

  ‘Super clever,’ added Milk.

  ‘I can’t think of any other explanation.’

  ‘Nor me.’

  They stood in silence for a long while, gazing at the mini-wonders of the world all around them.

  Suddenly, Milk announced, ‘We have to be sure.’

  ‘You’re right,’ agreed Jarvis, nodding slowly. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We have to be sure if it’s the porridge doing this or if it’s just one of those, you know, freaks of nature.’

  ‘Like you see on TV?’ asked Jarvis. ‘Freaks of the Animal Kingdom. I love that programme.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I saw one episode where there was this farm in America that was next to a school playground and all the cows had taught themselves to play kiss chase just by watching the children at playtime. It was amazing, seeing cows kissing.’

  Milk looked over at her friend, her eyes shining with admiration. ‘Jarvis, you’re brilliant.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘You are,’ she insisted, shuffling towards the cooker. ‘Here, give me a hand with the pot.’

  CHAPTER 12

  TOY TOWN

  They carried the porridge pot out of the kitchen and into the café. It was still half full and thankfully, it didn’t smell nearly as bad as before. In fact, it smelt almost sweet … well, mouldysweet; a bit like a bar of chocolate that’s been lying around in the back of a cupboard for twenty years.

  Jarvis began hacking at the porridge with a knife, breaking the dried-up mixture into chunks. With a spoon, Milk scooped out the chunks and put them into Tupperware boxes, squashing a lid onto each one. When they were done, they had eight boxes, full to the brim.

  ‘What else do we need?’ asked Jarvis.

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Milk, tucking one of the Tupperwares under her arm. ‘Let’s go.’

  It was that most rare thing in Slopp-on-Sea – a beautiful day. The morning sun climbed proudly into the sky, banishing any pesky clouds. Milk and Jarvis strode through the village and up a muddy track that led to the hills beyond. Hedgerows heavy with blackberries towered above them and all around, yellow splashes of dandelion littered the banks. The track narrowed. Ivy grew up and over them, turning the track into a tunnel.

  ‘Not far now,’ puffed Milk, her shoes heavy with mud.

  She turned to see Jarvis struggling some way back. It was heavy going for the heavy man. As she waited for him to catch up, she tried to remember the first time they had ever met. But it wasn’t possible; Jarvis had always just been there. She remembered sitting on her grandmother’s lap, watching Jarvis and Grandad playing chess in the café. Neither of them knew the rules, they just took turns moving the pieces around the chess board, making up far-fetched stories about the king’s double chin or the bishop’s underpants or a fearsome tribe of cannibal pawns. When Grandma died, Jarvis filled his café with flowers and for months after told wonderful stories about her to anyone who cared to listen.

  ‘Hurry up, slow coach,’ teased Milk, as Jarvis drew level.

  ‘Are we there yet?’ asked Jarvis. He was panting like an old dog and his trousers were totally splattered with mud.

  ‘Just a bit further. Here, let me help.’ And she went behind him and pushed against his back. Like a top-heavy pantomime horse they squilched-squelched up the track. At last, the slope began to level off. Dappled sun streaked through the ivy canopy, until suddenly they spilt out into open countryside.

  Days like this, so few and far between, made Milk realise how lucky she was to live in Slopp-on-Sea. In front of her sprawled a vast panorama of green fields with small patches of woodland dotted about in the distance. A field full of black-and-white cows looked lazily over in their direction. Seeing nothing of interest, they went back to their grazing, cowbells gently clanging as they moooved.

  Milk turned to face the sea, which curved away over the horizon. It was easy to see why people once believed that this was the edge of the world, where the sea fell away into a giant waterfall. And if that wasn’t enough to keep fishermen close to shore, there were always the legends of diabolical sea monsters.

  From this height Slopp-on-Sea resembled little more than a toy town, with miniature people going in and out of toy houses, and toy coaches vrooming along the curved promenade towards the toy pier, on the end of which stood a broken, wind-up Ferris wheel.

  Suddenly, Jarvis boomed out at the toy town beneath them, ‘I’ve got ants in my kitchen!’ He turned and grinned at Milk like a cheeky schoolboy.

  Milk giggled and followed suit, yelling, ‘Ms Cerise is an old fart!�
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  Jarvis’s turn. ‘Café Smoooth is on fire!’

  Then Milk. ‘Greasy Reecey Blanket!’

  And so on and so on until their throats were hoarse and their giggles dissolved into the morning sky.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE COWS

  Milk stood on the wooden fence waving a handful of freshly picked grass.

  ‘Come on, cow. Come to Milky.’

  ‘Here, cowey, cowey, cowey,’ sweet-talked Jarvis.

  But the cows ignored them.

  ‘Right,’ announced Milk impatiently. ‘I’m going in.’

  She tucked the Tupperware full of porridge under her arm and clambered over the fence.

  ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ asked Jarvis.

  ‘They’re only cows. I’ll be fine.’

  That said, her heart started beating just a little quicker as she approached the cows. They might look gentle, she told herself, but they’re certainly big and heavy. It wouldn’t take much on their part to squash a ten-year-old girl.

  One by one, the cows, all eight of them, stopped grazing and stared at Milk.

  ‘Don’t worry, Milk,’ she muttered under her breath, ‘that’s what cows do. They stare.’

  She took a couple of steps closer, then very slowly peeled off the lid of the Tupperware. One cow flicked its ear, another swished its tail. Milk took out a lump of porridge and in a gentle underarm throw, tossed it in the direction of the nearest cow.

  ‘Go on, moo-cow. Eat it.’

  But the cow didn’t budge.

  She threw another piece. This time the porridge landed right in between two cows.

  Nothing. Just more stares. She took a step forward and tried a third and a fourth time, but still the cows took no notice.

  One lump left. Now she was getting irritated. This wasn’t part of the plan. On the way up here, she’d imagined the whole herd happily trotting over to the fence and gratefully nibbling porridge out of her hand. Surely cows got bored with grass day in, day out.