by David Almond
The School Secretary is slowly softening, sighing, smiling as if she is becoming a different kind of Samantha Cludd. She sits upon a tall stool and Henry Picasso asks her to turn this way, to turn that, so the sunlight is like a halo around her face. And as he loses himself in watching her and in trying to recreate her with his paints, Henry gains in beauty too. As does everyone in the room, as they share the messy joy of making art.
Kevin Hawkins stares into a mirror. He paints himself, as he did years ago in lovely Miss Green’s reception class. He paints a whole series of pictures that stretch back into the past. He paints himself with white hair and a beard as the Villain, and in black as the Chief Inspector. He paints the unhappy silent boy in the unhappy silent home with the unhappy parents. He paints the yearning boy with the cardboard spaceship and the spaceman called Sid. He paints the farting angel spreading his wings over the stable and the nativity scene. He paints himself as a baby, sweet as all babies are, in his smiling mummy’s arms. He paints these things quickly, and he lays them out to dry and then moves on to painting himself as he is now – just Kevin Hawkins, someone who looks half like a boy and half like a man, a boy who is growing up and coming to understand himself. As he looks and paints, he sees that he still has the image of the baby, the angel, the spaceman and the disguises still within him. He paints, and he is very pleased.
Many of the children create the angel. They model him in plasticine and clay. They picture him in flight and at rest. They draw the detailed loveliness of his wings, the tiny fibres of the feathers. And Angelino performs for them, he rises and falls, tumbles and swerves, dances and soars. He comes to rest so that they can see him clearly, and then he rises again and soars again.
As they all work, Ms Monteverdi sings. It is something Italian and very beautiful. And she inspires, suggests, praises, corrects in her kind sweet voice. That’s so luvly, petal. Ali, that is just wunderbar! A dab of yellow there, I think. Gadzooks, who thought you could do that! A stroke there like this, like that – oh yes, good lad. Correctamundo!
And soon other children begin to arrive, vagabonds from other classes, escapees from the G&Ts. They open the door, peep round, step in, mean just to stay for a moment or two to see the little angel, but under Ms Monteverdi’s sweet encouragement they stay, they put on aprons, they get their canvases, paper, plasticine, clay, paints.
And teachers, too, are drawn towards the sunlit Art room. Maybe they have no class to teach, or they’ve come from curiosity, or they’re searching for the escapees, but like the children they’re drawn in and they stay. They create the angel, they create each other, they create the world that can be seen inside the room and through the windows, and they create other worlds from memory, from imagination. They make creatures with horns and wings, fairies and princesses and ghouls, aliens with five legs and seven eyes.
Ms Monteverdi continues to move, to sing, to praise.
“Paint with the brain,” she whispers. “Draw with the soul, bring the image from your blood and bones.”
They make images of professors and teachers and archbishops and crooks and priests. They make images of the world’s Basher Malones, coarse, half-formed dark and scary things. They make images of lovely creatures like themselves.
They create the universe – the unseen moon, the unseen stars, imagined other worlds and galaxies.
They fill the room with paintings, drawings, models. They hang them from the walls and from the ceiling. They place them on benches and shelves. And as the morning wears on, they create with more freedom, more passion, more delight. And the room starts to look just like a world itself, like this world, a world of loveliness and change and form and mess. A world that’s packed with creatures, with finished things and half-formed things and hints of things, and with gaps and spaces where more, much more, can be imagined and created.
At break time some kids go out into the yard to run like wild young things, to visit the library, to gossip and natter, to play games of football. And then they come back to the Art room. It seems that on this weird morning the school timetable has fallen apart. No sign anywhere of Professors or Advisors or Acting Head Teachers. No teachers roar at the children and tell them where they must be but all are allowed to go into the room that is enlightened by the spirit of Ms Monteverdi and the angel, and by those children who saved Angelino, by those who stole Angelino but who have now seen the light. And sometimes in that room the children find themselves swaying, dancing, and as the sunlight pours across them and the glittering dust dances around them, it seems at moments that they almost fly.
Some time after break a shy and hesitant creature appears at the Art room door. It’s the Acting Head Teacher, Mrs Mole.
Nancy sees her there. She and Alice Obi go over to her.
“Are you all right, Miss?” she asks.
“Yes,” says Mrs Mole.
“Are you sure, Miss?” says Alice.
Mrs Mole looks into the eyes of the two concerned children.
“I slipped out of the meeting to go to the toilet,” she explains. She pauses. “I don’t think I want to go back again.”
“That’s OK, Miss,” says Nancy.
“I don’t think,” Mrs Mole whispers very softly, “that I want to be an Acting Head Teacher any more.”
“That’s OK, Miss,” says Alice. “You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be.”
“You can come in here with us and with Angelino,” says Nancy.
“Can I?”
“Of course you can. Let me get you an apron. Would you like to paint, to draw, to work with clay?”
“I don’t know,” says Mrs Mole. Then she stops and smiles and softens. “No. I do know. I think I would like to make some animals with clay. I did so love that when I was a little girl.”
“I will get you some clay, Miss,” says Nancy. “Come and sit here with me.”
And so the Acting Head Teacher sets to work, a little tentatively at first, but Nancy and Alice encourage her.
“You can do it, Mrs Mole. You know you can.”
And Mrs Mole smiles at her grubby, slippery fingers as they move about the lump of clay and begin to investigate it, to play with it, to mould and shape it, and she laughs with delight at the little cat that begins to come into existence between her hands.
Then Angelino is there in the air at her side.
“Aye-aye, lass,” he says.
“Hello, Angelino,” she says.
And he perches on her shoulder, and starts to sing a song, with words that nobody knows, but that everybody can tell are very beautiful and very kind.
The Government Advisor and the Professor are looking out of their window. They’re looking across the yard to the Art room.
“Chaos,” groans Smellie.
“Discord,” sneers Nutt.
“A free-for-all. A mess. A—”
They hear the lunchtime bell. They can also see into the dining room from here. They watch the children and the staff pour in. They watch them dine. They see Betty Brown going from table to table with massive steaming jugs, pouring yellow liquid into bowls.
“Custard,” says Smellie.
“And cake,” says Nutt.
“See how excited it makes them?”
“Yes. Ugh! And look, is that Mrs Mole with them?”
“Watch how she lifts that custard to her lips. Watch how she licks it.”
“Is that any way for an Acting Head Teacher to behave?”
“She is no better than the children.”
“And look, there is that … ugh! That … thing on her shoulder.”
They stare together at Angelino. They stare together into the void.
“No good can come of looking at such disturbing things,” says Nutt at last.
“No, sir,” says the Professor.
“Call me Cornelius,” says Nutt.
“Thank you, Cornelius.”
“And your name is…?”
“Cecil.”
“Cecil Smellie. A
splendid name for a professor.”
“Thank you, Cornelius. It did cause trouble when I was younger, of course.”
“Ah, I know all about that. Bullying?”
“Somewhat.”
“We must all rise above such things.”
“Indeed. And we are grown men, are we not?”
“Indeed. We shall bring order where there has been chaos.”
“Where there is discord, we will bring harmony.”
“Indeed.”
“Indeed.”
“Close the blinds, Cecil,” says Cornelius Nutt. “It is best for men like us not to look upon such things.”
“Yes, Cornelius. It will be better that way.”
And so Cecil Smellie closes the blinds, and the sunlight leaves them and they continue their Important Work in the shadows.
The Government Advisor and the Professor are not the only ones in shade.
If we look beyond the school gates, across the road and on the other side of the little park, there’s a deep black shape in the shadow of a dark building.
Can it be? Yes, it surely is! It’s the monster, Basher Malone.
Strange, he doesn’t look too scary as he stands there. See the way his shoulders droop, the way he hangs his head. He looks so sad. Can it be? A sad and lonely Basher Malone?
Of course it could be.
Maybe he’d love to join in with the art-making and custard-and-cake-eating. Maybe he’d love to be a friend of the angel rather than to gobble him up. Maybe he’d love to be little again, to be a schoolboy again. Maybe he’d…
Oh, look, he’s turning away. Looks like he’s heading back to the dark door in the dark street. Strange. I feel a bit sorry for him. Do you? Maybe even Basher, a thing that seemed so ugly and horrible, could be turned into something good. Maybe there’s a tale to tell about that. The Salvation of Basher Malone. That’s a good title. Maybe an angel flies into Basher’s pocket. Or maybe he finds one in his big soft-soled boot one morning.
Maybe anybody, even the Basher Malones of this world, could stumble across an angel and begin to change into a better person. Maybe he isn’t quite ready to take part in Ms Monteverdi’s Art class, or to drink Betty Brown’s custard, but maybe one day…
Well, that’s not part of this tale, but maybe you could tell it.
In the shadowed room, the meeting is almost done. How time has flown! Smellie and Nutt haven’t even had the time to eat. But great decisions have been made.
“So,” says Cornelius Nutt, “we shall present our decisions as a series of bullet points.”
“Excellent idea,” says Cecil Smellie.
“So, to recap…”
• Professor Smellie will become Head Teacher with immediate effect
• Mrs Mole will be sacked
• The school day will begin an hour earlier
• Art lessons will be chopped
• Morning break will be abolished
• Lunchtimes will be cut by 15 minutes
• Cake and custard will be banned
• Bus-based projects will be banned
• No child shall say “nowt” nor “aye” nor use a double negative
• All boys must wear suits and ties and shiny shoes
• Male teachers will wear ditto
• All girls must wear frocks and sensible sandals
• Female teachers will wear ditto
• All children will be tested in spelling, grammar, punctuation, multipl…
But we don’t need the whole long boring list, do we? We all know the kind of decisions they would have made in their Very Important Long and Boring Meeting, don’t we? So let’s move on.
Smellie proudly holds the list in his hands.
“We have forgotten something, Cornelius!” he says suddenly.
“Have we, Cecil?”
“Angels, sir.”
“Ah, yes, angels. Simple. Angels will be banned. Books containing references to angels will be removed from the library and from the classroom shelves forthwith.”
“Excellent! I see why you are a Government Advisor, sir.”
“Thank you. I will soon introduce you, Cecil Smellie, to Mr Narcissus Spleen. And perhaps you would like to have lunch with the Prime Minister’s wife?”
“I would indeed, Cornelius.”
The pair smile fondly at each other. They shake each other’s hand.
“Shall we step out,” says Cecil, “and share the outcome of our meeting?”
“Indeed we shall.”
And so they do. But outside the room, things are strangely ordered, strangely quiet. Perhaps this is their perfect school.
The children, and everyone else, have gone.
This is what Smellie and Nutt missed while they muttered to each other in the shaded room…
Betty’s pouring the last trickle of custard into a lovely lad’s bowl. Angelino suddenly becomes excited. He squeaks with joy and flies to the dining-room window. A row of big red buses is pulling up outside, and driving the one at the very front, of course, is Mr Bertram Brown.
“It’s Bert!” says Betty. “And look! It’s Oliver Crabb, Supervisor of the Drivers.”
It is indeed. Oliver Crabb is stepping out of his bus driver’s cab and walking proudly to the gates wearing his beautifully ironed Supervisor’s uniform and his splendid Supervisor’s helmet. Behind him, in a happy little group, come the other drivers: Bert himself, Bert’s best mate, Sam, Bob Blenkinsop, lovely Lily Finnegan and handsome Raj Patel.
Mrs Mole and Samantha Cludd stare at each other.
What should they do?
Mrs Mole wipes the clay from her hands and goes to the gate to greet them. Samantha follows.
“Greetings, madam,” says Oliver Crabb. “I am Mr Oliver Crabb, Supervisor of the Drivers.”
“And I am Mrs Mole, Acting Head Teacher.”
“Splendid! I have come here with a gift for you all.”
“A gift?” says Mrs Mole.
“Yes, indeed,” says Oliver Crabb. “To celebrate the arrival of an angel in our town, the bus company has decided to donate an afternoon of free travel to this angel, and to everyone at St Mungo’s School.”
He beams.
“So,” he says, “would you like to gather the children and follow these excellent drivers to their buses?”
“Just like that?” says Mrs Mole.
“Yes, madam. Just like that!”
Mrs Mole and Samantha Cludd stare at each other once again.
They find that Nancy, Jack, Alice and Ms Monteverdi are standing beside them. They find that Angelino is flying above their heads. They find themselves grinning, smiling, laughing.
“That’ll be brilliant!” says Nancy.
“Thank you very much, Mr Crabb!” says Alice.
“You will find that there is cake and pop inside each bus,” says Oliver Crabb, “to help with the spirit of merry-making.”
“We could call it an Experimental School Project,” suggests Ms Monteverdi.
“Yes,” says Mrs Mole. “Buses and Angels and—”
“Children and Cooks and Drivers and—”
“Cake!” sings Angelino. “Cake!”
He flies to Bert and perches on his shoulder.
“Very well!” says Mrs Mole. She looks towards the window where the shades are tightly drawn. “But we must set off quietly,” she says. “We don’t want to disturb the Very Important Meeting, do we?”
And so it happens. Mrs Mole, Ms Monteverdi and Samantha Cludd collect all the children and the teachers and the assistants and the helpers and the cleaners from the dining hall, from the playground, from the classrooms and the library. They lead them out, tiptoeing silently past the meeting room, through the corridors, out of the front door, through the school gates and out to the waiting buses.
Soon the school is emptied and the lovely red buses are full, and there is just enough room for them all. Mr Crabb guides everyone to their places. Then he climbs into his own driver’s cab, switches
on his engine, gives the thumbs-up to Bert, Sam, Bob, Raj and Lily.
Bert Brown, in his lovely red bus, with the angel Angelino sitting on his shoulder and his good wife Betty sitting just behind, leads the happy procession away from school.
And all that afternoon they travel through the city and through villages and towns and over green hills and past pale beaches and fields of dancing corn. And breezes blow and the sea shimmers and people wave and birds fly and dogs run and aeroplanes soar overhead. The world keeps on turning as it always has, and the sun follows its astonishing arc above us all as it always does. The buses carry people smudged with clay and spattered with paint, and they all eat cake and they all drink pop, and they all sing silly songs and happy songs, and Angelino watches and joins in and loves the fact that he turned up in a bus driver’s pocket in such a lovely world as this.
The day comes to an end, as all days must. And this tale comes to an end, as all tales must.
The buses empty. Everyone goes home. Bert and Betty walk together from the bus depot to their nice little home in Bus Conductor’s Lane.
Angelino holds their hands, and swings back and forth between them.
Betty laughs. “Angelino, you’re becoming quite a weight, lad.”
It’s true. Angelino’s a little taller, a little heavier than he was. What keeps him in the air is not his wings, but Bert and Betty’s loving hands.
They all laugh.
Bert and Betty hold him tighter and swing him higher.
How he loves it.
“Higher!” he calls. “Higher! Higher! Higher!”
They swing him high.
“More!” he calls. “More, more, more!”
“Kids!” says Betty.
“Kids!” says Bert.
“Higher! Higher!”
At home, Angelino has a supper of bread and jam and midget gems. He drinks a little glass of milk. He stretches and yawns and his wings give a tired little flicker.