The Book of the Banshee

by Anne Fine

  As quickly as I could, I spun up the stairs to the balcony.

  Chapter 7

  I’D THROWN AWAY a good few golden stars in Chopper’s Book of Friends, that was for sure. The look he gave me when I finally pushed open the door was little short of Estellish.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  I padded over on all fours, keeping my head below the parapet.

  ‘I got trapped.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Who by?’

  ‘My mother and your dad.’

  ‘Blimey!’

  That put an end to his pouting. He dug in his pocket and fetched out a peppermint as a peace offering. It was coated in fluff, but I took it anyway to show there was no ill-feeling.

  ‘What’s going on down there?’ I whispered, nodding over the balcony. ‘What have I missed?’

  Chopper shrugged. He looked mystified.

  ‘I can’t work it out at all,’ he complained. ‘I’ve been plugged in since it began, honestly. I’ve listened to every word. But so far as I can make out, Scotbags is explaining to the parents where babies come from.’

  ‘Come off it!’ I chortled.

  He simply shrugged again.

  ‘Move over,’ I ordered.

  Obediently, Chopper shunted along to make room. I was about to shove my eye to a hole drilled through the parapet to take some long-abandoned wire, when Chopper took to sniffing the air.

  ‘What’s that peculiar smell?’

  ‘Peppermint?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. It’s sort of sickly and disgusting, with mouldy flowers on top.’

  ‘Oh, that! That’s Marisa’s scent.’

  Chopper looked horrified.

  ‘You’ve kissed Marisa?’

  I turned and glowered at him. He took a full dose of gamma rays before muttering an apology. Only then did I turn my attention back to the eye hole. I peered and listened for a little while. Chopper appeared to be right. Scotbags was standing at the front of the stage, waving his arms around like a windmill in a high gale, and giving the parents what appeared to be a sex talk. I tried to pay full attention, though we get revision classes on this topic so often now, I’ve practically trained myself to unplug at the very first mention of glands and hormones and instinctual drives. But I did listen to him boring away as long as I could stand it. Then I gave up.

  Chopper was leaning back against the parapet, blowing smoke rings from an imaginary cigar.

  ‘Has he been going on like this ever since he kicked off?’ I whispered.

  Chopper nodded, and picked an imaginary flake of fine tobacco from his lower lip before whispering back.

  ‘Pedalling on about hormones since he began. I think he must have gone well beyond his allotted half-hour. You take a peek at Miss Sullivan. She looked ready to pass him The Poisoned Cocoa ten minutes ago.’

  I checked it out. Chopper was right again. Miss Sullivan sat bolt upright in her prison governor blue, looking as if she had heard more than enough of all this tosh about young people and their inner storms. Even as I watched, she shifted impatiently on her chair, scraping its legs deliberately across the floorboards.

  And Scotbags took the hint.

  ‘But that’s enough about the problem!’ he cried. ‘More to the point, what is the solution?’ And off he went again, this time quoting huge chunks, word for word, out of the school prospectus. I only recognized it because, once, Miss Sullivan caught me pulling the pins out of Hope Johnson’s hair, and made me learn a page and a half by heart as a punishment:

  ‘School is a natural forum for the development of friendships, but it often causes real embarrassment and awkwardness that boys, while fairly matched intellectually with girls, mature emotionally at such a grossly different rate . . .’

  By now Miss Sullivan was looking as if raw meat alone would satisfy her. She rattled her chair legs on the floor. She drummed her fingers on her prison skirt. She glowered horribly. It was quite clear that if Scotbags didn’t hand the audience over soon, something inside her would snap.

  ‘It’s not a question of being strict and old-fashioned for the sake of it,’ Mr Scotbeg was saying. ‘Rather, we attempt to apply the rules of common sense while we regulate the social life of the boys and girls in our care.’

  He stopped. He’d come to the end of all he could remember. So, switching his affable headmaster act back up to Regulo 8, he turned with a smile to Miss Sullivan.

  ‘And I think,’ he offered tentatively. ‘I think it’s just possible Miss Sullivan might like to add a brief word or two . . .’

  ‘Fancy that!’ Chopper murmured beside me.

  Miss Sullivan rose to her feet and pounded towards the front of the stage with a wild gleam in her eye.

  ‘I think this is going to be the good bit,’ I told Chopper.

  He blew out a leisurely smoke ring and smiled seraphically. Miss Sullivan’s voice blasted over the parapet like a well-aimed grenade.

  ‘Parents!’ she cried.

  There was a startled rattle of chair legs as even those Scotbags had bored into discreetly snoring little heaps shot back to wakefulness.

  ‘Parents! These are dangerous times! Dangerous times!’

  One or two of the parents I could see in the front rows turned their heads to glance at one another. Was the woman unhinged? Miss Sullivan paused for breath, then started off again, not like Scotbags, in the measured tones of a talking school brochure, but prowling up and down along the front of the stage, rolling her eyes like someone desperate to escape from their locked ward and warn the world about the little green men.

  ‘Have you noticed anything strange about your children recently?’

  More heads turned to one another uneasily, but she didn’t notice. She batted on.

  ‘That son of yours who used to be so pleasant and helpful and straightforward. Has he turned secretive and peculiar? Has he taken to lurking in his bedroom for hours and hours on end?’

  A ripple of shock ran through the hall. It was extraordinary. Usually, even from a glance you can tell half of them are sitting there wondering if they’ve left the iron on, and the other half are thinking about what they’re missing on telly. But suddenly scores of them were sitting bolt upright with their ears pinned back, listening as hard as they could. Miss Sullivan had only uttered a few words, and yet, even through a tiny peep-hole, you could tell that most of those sitting in front of her were totally plugged in to what she was saying.

  ‘Has your boy become clumsy and awkward? Has he begun to slip away to his room the moment you haul the vacuum cleaner out of the cupboard, or mention the washing-up? Does he burst through doorways like Neanderthal man?’

  She dropped her voice before letting rip with the next batch of rude observations.

  ‘Or maybe without any warning at all he’s turned irritable and insolent, and started to argue all the time. And what is he doing up there all alone in his bedroom? You don’t know, do you? But sometimes you come back from shopping or a hard day’s work, and you find he’s been doing something totally insane, like gluing his wood models on top of his bedspread, or stripping down his bike on a perfectly good carpet.’

  I felt a sharp push. Chopper had laid aside his imaginary cigar, and was trying to force me away from the peep-hole. I thought of resisting, but it was his turn. So obediently I moved over.

  ‘Look!’ Chopper muttered bitterly. ‘Look at my dad! Mouth hanging open, nodding away like an idiot! He obviously thinks she’s talking directly to him!’

  It seemed the right moment to ask him. ‘What’s your dad doing down there anyway? You’re not an Intermediate.’

  But Chopper slumped back on the floor in disgust, and wouldn’t answer. To cheer him up, I handed him back his imaginary cigar, and stuck my eye to the hole again. Now Miss Sullivan was standing so close to the edge of the stage, you’d think she might topple over into the audience. The wild light was still in her eyes. She was pointing a finger.

  ‘And all the rest of you!’ she cried. ‘What abo
ut your little girls? Changed, are they? Acting oddly? Maybe they’ve gone sullen and cheeky, and answer you back all the time. Maybe they’ve grown selfish and rude and inconsiderate, locking themselves in the bathroom for hours on end, and leaving their bits and pieces all over the place, for other people to pick up.’

  Chopper gave me a nudge.

  ‘I think she’s talking about your sister now.’

  Mum clearly thought so too. I had located her at last. She’d found an empty seat halfway down one of the aisles, and she was perched on the edge, rapt, like someone listening for the last number on their Bingo card. All round her, heads were nodding furiously. Miss Sullivan had obviously done her homework on girls.

  ‘Has she become practically impossible to live with recently?’ she was demanding. ‘Does she dress up in jumble and expect you to let her go out and be seen by the neighbours? If you speak to her nicely, does she snarl? In fact, if you give her a word of sensible advice about anything, does she snap your head off?’

  ‘She is, then,’ Chopper insisted. ‘She’s definitely talking about your sister.’

  Miss Sullivan gave a little laugh. It wasn’t pleasant. No, it wasn’t pleasant.

  ‘Apart from that,’ she said, ‘she probably hardly ever speaks. She probably hardly ever smiles.’ Hastily, she corrected herself: ‘Well, that’s to you, of course. I’m sure she’s still all smiles and merry chatter with her friends.’

  Miss Sullivan added, ‘In fact, she’s probably so chatty with her friends that your last phone bill came as a bit of a shock . . .’

  Even over the parapet we could hear the gasps of astonishment. Chopper nudged me again, nodding, and I remembered he was at our house the morning Dad ripped open one of the yellow envelopes from the phone company and took a major fit with poor Estelle.

  And he wasn’t the only one nodding, either. Down in the hall, the rows of heads were going up and down, up and down.

  Chopper shoved me aside.

  ‘Look at them all!’ he hissed angrily. ‘Loving every minute of it!’

  What was the matter with him? I didn’t get it at all. I mean, Chopper might have to wrangle a bit with his mother every now and again about his social life versus her beauty sleep, but that is nothing. If Chopper wants to know about real arguing, he ought to move to 27 Beechcroft Avenue and see Mum and the Banshee scrapping with one another like fiends out of hell. What happens in Chopper’s house is probably what my dad has in mind when he suggests ‘a friendly discussion’.

  Personally, I don’t think Chopper knows he’s born.

  I picked up his imaginary cigar, and blew a perfect smoke ring over his head.

  ‘Don’t get so worked up,’ I whispered. ‘You needn’t take it personally. She isn’t talking about people like you. These are parents of the Intermediates, not our year.’

  Chopper turned from the peep-hole and gave me a very odd look indeed.

  ‘We’re back here tonight,’ he pointed out, ‘because last year we didn’t stay hidden long enough to hear the talk. But it’s exactly the same talk. That’s why my dad’s shown up. He missed it last year.’

  Good thing it wasn’t a real cigar. I’d have choked. Not just because it always rattles me when Chopper, who, as I may have hinted, isn’t bright, works something out before I do. What threw me most was suddenly realizing that Mum and Dad must have gone through the whole of the last year with me in their sights and this speech ringing in their ears.

  How would you feel about that? A bit cheesy, I’ll bet.

  And I don’t mind just this once taking a leaf out of Miss Adulewebe’s Guide Book for Unfeeling Writers and telling you I was a bit put out to think that every time I spent a bit of time upstairs scribbling away quietly in this book by myself, my mum and dad had got me marked down as being a secretive and peculiar bedroom lurker, as advertised well in advance by the Celebrated Neuro-Physiologist Mr Scotbeg, and his colleague Miss Sullivan, World-Famous Expert on Outlandish Teenage Behaviour.

  ‘Cheek!’

  Chopper pitched in, like a good mate.

  ‘What does she know about it, anyway? Interfering old trout!’

  He was making for the peep-hole again, but I shouldered him aside. It was my turn, after all. And I wanted to have another look at my mother.

  Now I came to think about it, what was she doing here for the second time in a row? It wasn’t as if she could have made a mistake about the evening’s programme. By the time she and Chopper’s dad finally showed up in the doorway, Scotbags had been well away unfolding his thoughts about hormones. Mum must have realized this wasn’t going to be the usual order of events (Miss Sullivan thrashing about with her pointer explaining this month’s changes in the national curriculum, followed by Scotbags trumpeting on in a threatening fashion about the litter piling in unsightly mounds up against the school fence, and the need for more volunteers on the fund-raising committee).

  So why had my mother stayed? She’s always going on about how busy she is, and how her briefcase is bulging at the seams. As soon as she realized she’d shown up for the second year in a row for exactly the same talk about steaming glands, why didn’t she turn straight round and drive back home? I’ve caught her skulking away in the garage often enough, trying to get through tomorrow’s paperwork before setting foot in the house.

  Why wasn’t she doing that now? Why was she still here?

  Deeply curious, I singled her out again from the nodding throng. She was still perched on the edge of her seat, gazing towards the stage. Somehow the set of her head reminded me strongly of someone. For a moment I couldn’t think who, but then it came to me, and I was horrified. My mum looked just like that woman in the red knitted beret who comes every Saturday to listen to the Welshman preaching in the arcade. I watched her leaning forward, mesmerized, and thought I understood at last. My mother, who hasn’t been in a church as long as I can remember, had come to Hear the Word.

  Which had turned into a Warning. For now Miss Sullivan drew herself up straight as a pole and repeated in spine-freezing tones:

  ‘Dangerous times! I warn you, you must be very much on your guard! Any day now, that child of yours may sidle up to you—’

  She minced a few steps across the stage, until she was standing by the lectern on which Scotbags rests his elbows when he’s haranguing us about the way we let our bag buckles scrape the paintwork in the corridors, or drop our chocolate wrappers anywhere we please. She turned to face her audience and put on a young whiny voice.

  ‘“Mu-um. Da-ad. Why can’t I stay out till twelve? It isn’t late.”’

  A few parents chuckled. She waited till they were quiet. This wasn’t funny.

  ‘Twelve o’clock is late,’ she thundered. ‘It is late, late, late!’ She fixed them with the rattlesnake look. ‘Never give in!’ she commanded them. ‘Don’t even dream of weakening simply because you’re tired of arguing today. For you will only be exhausted tomorrow, and you will have all the extra ground to make up.’

  She stopped, to let her reasoning sink in. They were all paying the greatest attention. There was absolute silence. Even Scotbags looked transfixed.

  When she spoke again, it was in a low voice. The conspiratorial whisper ran through the hall and up, up, over the parapet, like a chill wind.

  ‘For your children are cunning,’ she warned. ‘Very, very cunning. They will try to get around you. Listen to some of the things they will say.’

  She tipped her head and cupped a hand to her ear, as if to listen to her own wheedling imitation.

  ‘“Mu-um. Da-ad. You don’t know how things are in our school. Everyone’s allowed to smoke . . .”’

  Her hand came crashing down on the lectern.

  ‘No one’s allowed to smoke!’

  Again she tipped her head and cupped her hand to hear herself wheedling: ‘“Everyone’s allowed to drink . . .”’

  The hand crashed down.

  ‘No one’s allowed to drink!’

  She cupped her hand for t
he third time, as if to catch the faraway bleat of some forlorn lost lamb.

  ‘“But Mu-um. Da-ad. Everyone’s allowed to go to bars and clubs . . .”’

  The hand came down so hard I thought the lectern might split. Her face was purple.

  ‘No one’s allowed to go to bars or nightclubs! United we stand and divided we fall. You must all stick together!’

  An electric charge ran through the hall. You’d think that every one of them had been poked with a cattle prod, the way they shot up in their seats. The women sat taller. Some of the men’s elbows jutted out at their sides, and I couldn’t think why, till I realized that they were straightening their ties. I quite distinctly saw Chopper’s dad suppress a military salute. She’d certainly got them going. This wasn’t a mere sermon. This was a call-to-arms.

  And now I understood why Mum had chosen to come a second time to this rousing lecture on Standing By Your Mates and Who Dares Wins. Months of Estelle had knocked the stuffing out of her. Listening to Miss Sullivan thumping her tub was probably the quickest way there was to get herself back on form. I’d never realized before that being a parent was like being in some giant national football team – Parents v. Children – with games scheduled every day. If the parents slack off, then their goal average crashes. Before they know it, they’ll be on their way down and out of the league, losing their major fixtures (like drugs and unprotected sex and staying out all night).

  Fat chance of that! Wallace School Intermediates’ parents looked ready for the comeback, leaping to their feet and stuffing their arms into their coat sleeves. The meeting was over, and they were all raring to go. There was none of the usual hanging about and chatting. They were emptying the hall as smartly as if Miss Sullivan’s last ringing cry of ‘Goodnight!’ was a fire bell.

  I nudged Chopper. Sighing, he stubbed out his cigar in an imaginary ashtray, and together we slipped down the balcony staircase and round the long way, past the science rooms, till we reached the back door. Outside, we threaded our way between the dustbins. At the corner by the kitchens I stopped warily in the shadow of the wall.