The Secret

by Ruth Thomas

  Roy was crying now, leaning on his arms against the playground wall, his small body racked with distraught sobs. ‘He’s just a cry-baby,’ said Eric.

  Nicky flew at him, and her scratching nails left three bright tramlines down the side of his face. ‘That does it!’ said Miss Powell. ‘Nicky Mitchell, go in and report to Mr Nelson for fighting!’

  ‘Who’s going to look after Roy?’

  ‘Do as you’re told.’

  ‘Not till I know who’s going to look after Roy.’

  ‘If Roy really needs a nanny he can come with me,’ said Miss Powell, not at all kindly. ‘And Nicky, if you don’t go to Mr Nelson this minute, there’ll be no more playtimes for you for a week!’ There was unconcealed dislike in the eyes that followed Nicky’s retreating back.

  Mr Nelson was looking forward to his retirement at the end of the term. He had enjoyed his teaching life, but now he was tired, and it was all getting too much. He was not very well, he had lots of aches and pains, and this morning his arthritis was particularly bad. Mr Nelson’s lined face was quite grey from the pain.

  He was drinking his mid-morning tea and wondering if he could snatch a quick doze before the bell went, when Nicky Mitchell made her unwelcome appearance. ‘Miss Powell said to come.’

  Mr Nelson sighed, and ran a hand over the sparse strands of hair, plastered carefully across his head. ‘Oh dear, what have you been doing now?’

  ‘Nothing. . . . How is you arthritis today, Sir?’

  ‘Come on, Nicky!’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Try. Force yourself.’

  ‘. . . Only fighting a bit.’

  ‘A good start to the week, wouldn’t you say? And how many times last week?’

  ‘They didn’t ought to pick on Roy.’

  ‘Children can be very cruel, I know, but Roy has to learn to stand up for himself. What’s going to happen next term when you’re at your new school?’

  ‘Don’t you start!’

  ‘Nicky!’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Nelson! But you don’t know what it’s like for him. They tease him to death. You want to try it some time.’

  ‘Come on, Nicky, you know the old saying – “Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.”’

  ‘The one that said that told a lie,’ said Nicky.

  ‘I believe you’ve got a point there,’ said Mr Nelson, thoughtfully. ‘You’re a funny mixture, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Nicky.

  ‘Look, we’ll make a bargain,’ said Mr Nelson. ‘I’ll have a word with Roy’s teacher and see if we can do something to stop this teasing. It is only teasing, isn’t it? He’s not getting knocked about in any way? . . . I thought so. Right. I’ll have a word with Mrs Blake and you, you, Nicky Mitchell, keep your fists to yourself in the playground for a week. Done?’

  ‘Done!’ said Nicky.

  Only the playground, Nicky told herself. Sir only said in the playground. And Eric Morris was sitting there looking just a bit too pleased with himself, in spite of the scarlet scratches down his cheek. Perhaps because of the scratches. Looking forward to the story he was going to tell his mum, probably, all about that evil witch Nicky, who went about clawing lines down people’s faces, and pulling their hair nearly out. But he wouldn’t bother to mention what he did first, oh no!

  The class was working an English exercise in their best books; listlessly, but with only a few muttered complaints. Mrs Patel, straight and composed with folded hands, watched them from the front. Her eyes moved serenely from right to left and back from left to right. When Mrs Patel’s eyes focused right, they covered Nicky’s group. When they moved left, Nicky’s arm shot out and pushed Eric’s elbow so his ball-point pen made an ugly score across the page. ‘You jogged me!’ Eric was deeply aggrieved. He took a pride in having neat books, and now his book was spoiled.

  ‘Who jogged you? I never jogged you!’

  ‘Yes you did, Nicky Mitchell! Look what you done to my book!’

  ‘I never! I never, did I, Joycelyn? I never touched his book, did I?’

  ‘What is the matter?’ said Mrs Patel.

  ‘Look what that hell-cat done to my book. And to my face!’

  ‘Do you think that is a nice name to call someone?’ said Mrs Patel.

  ‘Nicky ain’t a nice person,’ said Marcus.

  Nicky grinned, enjoying herself.

  ‘Please do not let there be any more trouble,’ said Mrs Patel. But next time her eyes travelled to the left, Nicky’s arm shot out again, and now there was a jagged tear, as well as a black score, on Eric’s page.

  ‘Tell her, Miss!’

  ‘Nicolette, please come and sit at this desk by yourself,’ said Mrs Patel.

  The desk in question was a spare one, against the wall at the front of the room. Sitting in it, Nicky was behind Mrs Patel and her calm searchlight eyes. It was a small desk, belonging to the younger classes really, and Nicky had difficulty fitting her long legs under it. She fidgetted, and knocked her knees against the desk, and sat sideways. She was nearly under the board. Nicky picked up a piece of yellow chalk and stretched across the little desk to draw on the board.

  She drew a fat boy, with bloated cheeks and a great rolling belly. The class began to giggle. Nicky was no artist, but the fat boy was clearly meant to be Eric. To leave no possible room for doubt, Nicky added three lines down the side of his face. Then she drew a great balloon, coming from the fat boy’s mouth. Inside the balloon she printed the words I AM A FAT PIG. It was not very funny really but the class, bored to tears with the English exercise, found it quite hilarious.

  Eric, sensitive about his curves, began to cry. ‘Who’s a cry-baby now?’ said Nicky, scornfully.

  Mrs Patel was very much put out. ‘I think you are a very naughty girl,’ she said to Nicky. ‘Are you always a naughty girl like this?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicky, grinning.

  ‘Please use my name when you speak to me,’ said Mrs Patel, who was not used to rudeness from eleven-year-olds.

  ‘Yes, Mrs – Whatsyournameagain?’ said Nicky. The maddening grin was still on her face.

  The class giggled when Nicky called Mrs Patel Mrs Whatsyournameagain. ‘My name is Mrs Patel, and that is a very ordinary name, so it is easy to remember. In fact, I notice that there are two children already in this very class with that name.’

  Nicky shrugged.

  ‘Please get on with your work now, all of you.’

  Nicky looked at the clock. Only half past eleven, three quarters of an hour before dinner time, and how this day was dragging! What did Mr Hunt want to be ill for? Probably he wasn’t ill really. Probably he just had too much beer at the pub last night, so he didn’t feel like coming to school. So the whole class had to put up with boring Mrs Patel, and the morning that was never going to end. What about doing a magic spell, to make the time go by, so it would be home time, and she could know for certain that Mum was really back? Nicky experimented with making up a few spells, and chanting them under her breath, but they didn’t work. So there was nothing for it, she would have to liven up the morning instead. She would bait Mrs Patel a bit. That would stir things and amuse the class.

  ‘Mrs Whatsyournameagain,’ said Nicky. ‘Mrs Whatsyournameagain, can you help me, please, Mrs Whatsyournameagain?’

  Under the light brown skin, Mrs Patel’s cheeks went a dusky red. ‘You are being rude on purpose,’ she said, hurt and puzzled by this behaviour.

  ‘She can’t help it, Miss,’ said Marcus. ‘She’s always like that. She can’t help it.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Nicky agreed with him. ‘I can’t help it, see? I was born like it.’

  Mrs Patel must have wished very much to be allowed to slap Nicky’s grinning face. ‘If you cannot control your insolence, I do not want you any more in my class,’ she said. ‘You will have to go to the headmaster, to Mr – er – Mr. . . .’ It was very embarrassing for Mrs Patel; in the stress of the moment she h
ad forgotten his name.

  ‘It’s quite a ordinary name,’ said Nicky, goading her. ‘It begins with a N.’

  ‘Take your books and GO,’ said Mrs Patel.

  Nicky sat outside Mr Nelson’s room for the rest of the morning, because his ulcer was playing him up now, as well as his arthritis, and he couldn’t think of anything else to do with her. From time to time she called companionable remarks through his open door, because really she didn’t like being bad friends with Mr Nelson. But Mr Nelson firmly ignored her. He even made her eat her school dinner all by herself, which was hard on her, and Mr Nelson didn’t like doing it, but the child mustn’t be allowed to get away with everything. And after dinner she had to go to Miss Powell’s class, because Mrs Patel still wouldn’t have her back. Miss Powell was not pleased to have Nicky Mitchell dumped on her.

  Miss Powell was nursing another grievance as well. She was a conscientious teacher and an ambitious one. She worked very hard with her class – for instance there was always lots of fabulous art work on display in her room. Although she was young, she was already Deputy Head of the school, and she had thought she was going to be made Head when Mr Nelson retired. But there had been a meeting to choose the new Head, and the meeting didn’t choose Miss Powell, they chose someone from another school altogether. Perhaps the meeting thought it would be nice to have someone kinder than Miss Powell. Anyway, Miss Powell was still sore about it, and even snappier than she used to be before the meeting.

  ‘Sit there!’ she said to Nicky. ‘No, not there, stupid child, THERE!’

  She had a face like an old-fashioned Christmas card, Nicky thought, with a little pink mouth, and shiny-gold hair like a rippling waterfall, down her back. Quite pretty, really. What a shame, to have such a pretty face, and be so cross-tempered! ‘If I knew where THERE was,’ said Nicky, ‘I could sit in it.’

  ‘If you were as smart as you like people to think,’ said Miss Powell, ‘you’d know very well I didn’t mean you to sit next to Jason. No one in their right mind would put Nicky Mitchell within spitting distance of Jason Charles. And let me assure you,’ she added bitterly, ‘that in spite of a good many thankless years of beating my head against a brick wall over people like you, I’m not actually certifiable yet!’

  ‘I don’t know what all that was about,’ said Nicky. ‘Where am I supposed to sit?’

  ‘Sit by Karen, you rude little madam. And try not to do anything to annoy her. And don’t move, and don’t open your mouth. I want to be able to pretend you’re not here.’

  Nicky sat meekly by dull, good Karen; she had quite lost interest in being naughty. She felt spiritless all of a sudden, and tired. She had slept only half the night, and her eyelids were heavy. Her head nodded over the book she was supposed to be reading, and presently dropped forward on to the table in front of her.

  She slept soundly through the afternoon.

  Roy was already at the house when Nicky arrived. She found him peering forlornly through the letter box, and calling ‘M-u-um! Mu-u-um!’ There was only one latch key and one mortice key between the children, and Nicky carried them both. ‘She’s not answering,’ said Roy.

  ‘Shut up!’ said Nicky. ‘Do you want everybody to hear? She’s not supposed to be here this time of day, remember? She’s supposed to be at work. . . . Perhaps she is at work. Perhaps she came home and went out again.’

  The house was silent, empty of presence. The WELCOME HOME banner was still a bright splash of colour over the kitchen door, but the house did not feel as though it had welcomed anybody today. The children rushed through the downstairs rooms, looking for signs. ‘She hasn’t made a cup of tea,’ Nicky admitted. ‘But perhaps she didn’t have time.’

  ‘Her stuff isn’t here.’

  ‘Her stuff will be upstairs, in the bedroom,’ said Nicky. She bounded up the stairs and was quiet for a long time. When she came down she was smiling and singing ‘Jesus wants me for a sunbeam’, to show she wasn’t worried really.

  ‘Her stuff ain’t there, is it?’ said Roy.

  ‘Don’t say “ain’t”,’ said Nicky. ‘It’s bad manners.’

  ‘She hasn’t come home, has she?’ said Roy. He was sitting in a dejected heap on the sofa with the broken springs, twisting his fingers.

  ‘Well no, she hasn’t come. As a matter of fact she hasn’t actually come yet, but she will.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight. You know what I think it is? You know what I thought of when I was upstairs? She came back from the seaside and went straight to work! There, now we know why she hasn’t been home yet.’

  ‘I want Mum!’

  ‘Well, you’re going to have Mum. Tonight. When she comes back from work. . . . So you can stop moaning now and help me. Let’s think what we’re going to have for tea.’

  ‘Can we have baked beans?’ said Roy, cheering up a bit.

  ‘If there is any.’

  There was one tin of baked beans in the cupboard, two tins of peas, one of spaghetti hoops and one of rice pudding.

  ‘Shall we wait for Mum to come before we have it?’ said Roy.

  ‘She might be late, so we might as well have it soon,’ said Nicky. ‘And it will be just like ordinary times when Mum is late home from work. It will be just like that, Roy, no different. And after tea we will watch at the window again, to see her come.’

  They watched at the window, and the minutes crawled. ‘She’s not coming from work,’ said Roy. ‘It’s got too late!’

  ‘I know what it is then,’ said Nicky. ‘I just thought. She’s having another whole day by the sea. In the lovely weather.’ In fact, the day was rather chilly. ‘She will come home when it’s dark, you’ll see!’

  ‘I don’t think she’s going to come at all,’ said Roy.

  ‘Let’s play Rough Games,’ said Nicky.

  They rampaged round the house, shrieking with laughter and pelting one another with cushions. Mrs Williams banged on the party wall to stop them, and they banged back. ‘Suppose Mum’s dead!’ said Roy, suddenly.

  ‘Don’t say things like that!’

  ‘But supposing she is?’

  ‘You’re silly. How could she be dead?’

  ‘Like I said . . . there might have been a accident in the car.’

  ‘The police would have come. Remember the police?’

  ‘How would they know where to come, though, if Mum’s dead?’

  ‘Tony would tell them, of course. You are silly, Roy.’

  ‘Supposing Tony’s dead as well?’

  ‘. . . In the car accident?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a terrible silence for a moment. ‘I know though,’ said Nicky, ‘I know, her handbag!’

  ‘What about her handbag?’

  ‘The police can find people’s address from their handbag. They always do that. You know – like on the telly.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘How what?’

  ‘How can they find people’s address from their handbag?’

  ‘You know. Letters and things.’

  ‘Mum doesn’t have any letters.’

  She didn’t – or hardly ever. She had bills, but they always went behind the clock in the Back Room. ‘I know, I know – her Benefit Book!’ said Nicky, triumphantly. ‘You know, that she gets money with every week. From the post office. You know that book! It’s got our address on it and she always keeps it in her handbag, always!’

  ‘I think she didn’t take that bag.’

  ‘Yes she did, yes she did, I remember! That pig was shouting at her to hurry up, and she come down with her old bag, I remember. . . . And anyway her new ones are all in the bedroom, because I saw them.’

  ‘So the police would know where to come!’ said Roy, eagerly. ‘They would know where to come because of her bag!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So she isn’t dead!’

  ‘I told you already, why don’t you listen? And mind you put on a clean shirt tomorrow! That one’s got all messy.’

/>   Pamela and Pandora, who lived by the sea at Southbourne, were playing in their back garden. They were eight years old, and twins, and exactly like each other, and rather awful. Their mother had a new baby to look after, so she was pleased to have the twins amusing each other in the garden, and not getting under her feet – and she didn’t very often get round to asking them what they were doing.

  On this sunny summer evening, Pamela and Pandora were playing at crawling behind the shed. The hedge which bordered the road had grown and thickened since the shed was built, and now there was only a small space between it and the shed, just big enough for an eight-year-old to squeeze through. ‘I’ve found something,’ said Pandora, emerging first at the other end.

  ‘Show me,’ said Pamela.

  ‘No,’ said Pandora. ‘It’s mine. I found it.’

  ‘You’re a mean stinking pig!’

  ‘And you’re a smelly cow! All right, you can just look. It’s a handbag.’

  ‘That’s a funny thing to be behind our shed. Who put a handbag behind our shed?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? I don’t know everything in the world. It’s only an old one anyway, so they probably threw it away. They probably didn’t want it any more.’

  ‘We can have it for our dressing up,’ said Pamela.

  ‘You mean I can have it for my dressing up,’ said Pandora. ‘I was the one that found it.’

  ‘You’re a stingy sausage!’

  ‘And you’re a greedy gobble gobble turkey!’

  ‘What’s inside it?’ said Pamela.

  Pandora opened the bag, and tipped the assorted contents on to the ground. ‘Lipstick!’ said Pamela, in delight. ‘And keys!’

  ‘I might just let you put the lipstick on sometimes,’ said Pandora. ‘If you are polite to me.’

  ‘What’s this?’ said Pamela.

  ‘It’s a cheque book,’ said Pandora. ‘You know, for getting money out of the bank. They must have not wanted that any more as well.’

  ‘That’s not a cheque book, you silly stupid fool! Cheque books are blue.’

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘All right then, prove it. Prove that’s a cheque book. See, clever-clogs? You can’t prove it!’

  ‘Yes I can then, it’s got pages you can tear out. When you go to the bank to get the money. There’s one, see?’