The Schoolmouse

by Dick King-Smith

  It was too much to hope that there would be another conveniently placed hole in the wall, and, indeed, there wasn’t. But Flora was in luck nevertheless. Behind the Lower Juniors’ teacher’s desk was a long bookshelf. Like all mice, Flora could run up a sheer wall if it was roughcast and not too high, and she got up on to this shelf without much trouble.

  The books on it were loosely arranged, and squeezing between two of them, Flora found that the shelf was so deep that there was plenty of room behind, room and to spare for a schoolmouse keen to continue with her studies. She would be able to run up and down behind the line of books and peep out wherever there was a space.

  I’ll be better off than when I was an Infant, she thought – I’ll be able to look down on some of the children’s tables as well as the teacher’s desk. And there’s a nice view of the blackboard.

  Flora waited anxiously for the start of the spring term.

  On the day before it began there was a staff meeting.

  ‘One final thing,’ said the Headmistress to the Infant teacher and the Lower Junior teacher and the part-timer who came in two days a week to take the Top Juniors, ‘that I know you’ll be glad to hear. We are all animal lovers, I’m sure, but I’m happy to tell you that the local authority sent a man during the holidays who has exterminated all the mice. There is not a mouse alive anywhere in this school, not one.’

  SIX

  In Which Hyacinth Leads the Way

  Hyacinth had not lightly made the decision to leave school. She was aware that to journey with her family to some new, as yet unknown, home would be a hazardous business.

  But already she had lost nine children, her entire first litter of mousekins save for that stubborn girl Flora, and she did not want to lose another nine. For her, the school was now a place of death, and it was her duty to take them abroad, whatever the risks.

  ‘And it is your duty to accompany us,’ she said to her husband.

  ‘But, Hyce . . .’ began Ragged Robin.

  ‘No buts,’ said Hyacinth.

  So it was that, some nights after the great massacre, Hyacinth led the way out of the staffroom, out of the school, across the playground, and into the fields.

  Following her in single file came the nine mousekins, while a nervous Robin brought up the rear, casting fearful glances all around him as they threaded their way through the darkness.

  For some reason it had tickled Hyacinth’s fancy to give her second litter names beginning with the same letter, and as soon as they were clear of the school grounds she took a roll-call.

  ‘Lily?’ she called.

  ‘Here, Mum.’

  ‘Lilac? Lotus? Lupin?’

  ‘Here, Mum, here, Mum, here, Mum.’

  ‘Lobelia? Laburnum? Larkspur? Lavender?’ and there was a chorus of ‘Here, Mum’s.

  ‘Now who have I left out?’

  ‘Me, Mum,’ piped a little voice.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Love-in-a-mist, Mum.’

  ‘And me, Hyce,’ said a rather hurt voice.

  ‘Yes, yes, and you, Robin,’ said Hyacinth. ‘Now then, keep close together, nose to tail, and not a squeak out of any of you.’ Or the owls will get you, she thought. I only hope we can find shelter before long. I can’t think how fieldmice manage, living out here.

  Walking across even a large field is nothing to a human being, but the mousekins soon wearied of battling their way through the long grass. Despite whispers of ‘Sssh, darlings’ from Hyacinth and ‘Be quiet, you little fools’ from their father, there was soon a chorus of unhappy cries.

  ‘How much further?’

  ‘Are we nearly there?’

  ‘Can we have a rest?’

  ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘I’m cold.’

  ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘My feet hurt,’ piped the mousekins as they struggled along, and from the smallest, Love-in-a-mist, came a final cry of, ‘Mum! Stop! I can’t go any further.’

  Just at that moment Hyacinth saw a large squarish shape looming up in the corner of the big field.

  ‘Come along, darlings,’ she cried. ‘We’re nearly there,’ and she ran forward, to find herself at the foot of a great stack of straw bales. At that very minute an eerie wavering call sounded from the upper branches of a nearby hedgerow tree.

  ‘Tu-whit!’ it said. ‘Tu-whit!’ and then ‘Ho-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoooooo! ’

  ‘Quickly!’ cried Hyacinth. ‘Hurry, all of you!’ and at the sound of her voice, the tawny owl launched itself from its perch.

  Frantically Robin at the rear urged on his exhausted children – Lily, Lilac, Lotus, Lupin, Lobelia, Laburnum, Larkspur, Lavender and little Love-in-a-mist – and frantically the mousekins scuttled towards safety.

  ‘In here!’ cried Hyacinth, diving into a gap between two straw-bales, and in there they dashed as the owl swooped silently down, its talons spread ready to grip, its great golden eyes fixed on the last in line, Ragged Robin.

  From inside the safety of the stack, Hyacinth heard him give a single piercing squeal, and then there was a horrid silence.

  Hyacinth’s heart missed a beat. He’s been killed, she thought, my Robin’s been killed, and it need never have happened. We should never have left the school. It’s all my fault. I and I alone am to blame. And now I am a widow.

  She gathered her mousekins about her.

  ‘Children,’ she said in tones of deepest woe, ‘your father has gone.’

  ‘Where’s he gone, Mum?’ said Lotus.

  ‘West,’ said Hyacinth. ‘He has passed over.’

  ‘Over what, Mum?’ said Lobelia.

  ‘Over the Great Divide,’ said Hyacinth. ‘He’s had it.’

  ‘Mum,’ said Lupin. ‘What’s he had?’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ said Hyacinth sharply. ‘Daddy’s dead.’

  There was a moment’s silence and then, in a very small voice, ‘Poor Daddy,’ said little Love-in-a-mist.

  Suddenly Hyacinth thought she heard a distant cry. A muffled cry it was, coming from somewhere far back along the tunnels between the straw-bales through which they had come.

  ‘Hyce!’ came the muffled cry. ‘Hyce! Where are you?’

  Robin’s ghost, said Hyacinth to herself in an agony of spirit, come to haunt me for the rest of my days.

  But then the sound grew louder, and before long a familiar face appeared. An untidy sort of face it was, with one battered ear, but it was solid flesh and blood nevertheless.

  ‘Oh, Hyce!’ said Ragged Robin. ‘That was a narrow squeak.’

  In fact the owl’s dive had been a fraction of a second too late. When it landed in a flurry of loose straw at the foot of the stack, all that was still showing of Robin was his tail, that tail that had already been shortened in an old fight, and the best that the owl could do was to chop at it as the mouse disappeared.

  ‘Robin!’ cried Hyacinth, and ‘Daddy!’ cried the nine mousekins.

  ‘Oh Robin!’ said Hyacinth. ‘I thought I had lost you. I never was so hurt.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said Robin.

  ‘I heard that awful squeal,’ said Hyacinth, ‘and I thought you had come to a sticky end.’

  ‘I suppose I have, in a way, Hyce,’ said Ragged Robin, and he turned himself around so that they could see.

  All that was left of his tail was a bloodstained stump.

  SEVEN

  In Which Flora Sees a Ghost

  ‘There is not a mouse alive anywhere in this school, not one,’ the Headmistress had said at the staff meeting. She was wrong.

  What’s more, on the very next day there were two.

  One, of course, was Flora. The other belonged to Tommy, the naughtiest boy in the Top Junior class.

  Christmas is a time when people are sometimes given unsuitable presents. Often these are pets. Everyone knows that many puppies are bought by the wrong people for the wrong reasons and soon after discarded, often cruelly.

  Smaller pe
ts can suffer the same fate, and Tommy had been given a pet mouse as a Christmas present.

  For a few days it was a novelty for him, and he quite liked feeding it and watching it working away at the little treadmill that was fitted in its cage. But then he became bored with it. The pet mouse was bored too – that’s why it spent its time in the treadmill – and, no doubt, in due course Tommy would have neglected it. But then he had a brilliant idea.

  He remembered the disgust that the Headmistress had shown on finding mouse droppings on her register at the end of last term. And I bet she’s scared stiff of mice, he thought (and the other teachers too, with a bit of luck). I’ll take my mouse into school and let it go on her desk. I bet she’ll have forty fits!

  So it was that on the very first day of the spring term, Tommy took his mouse with him, secretly of course, for pets were not allowed in school. He brought it in a little cardboard box which he hid in the locker where he kept his books. He did not tell any of his friends.

  All morning he sat imagining the scene. He would wait till after lunch, till after the midday break. Then, when they came in from the playground, he would take the mouse out of its box and let it go on the Headmistress’s desk, just a moment before she entered the classroom. OK, so he’d be punished. He didn’t care. It would all be worth it, just to see her face and hear her scream!

  But as everyone knows, the best-laid schemes of mice and men don’t always quite work out. When Tommy came in from the playground at one o’clock and hurried to open the little cardboard box, it was empty. In one side of it a mouse-sized hole had been gnawed.

  All that afternoon Tommy sat, hopefully waiting, his eyes darting about the Top Junior classroom. The mouse must be somewhere around. Things might still work out all right, if only he could spot it and catch it, at afternoon break perhaps. But there was no sign of it.

  Maybe it’ll turn up tomorrow, Tommy said to himself, and if it doesn’t, what do I care? I’m tired of the stupid thing anyway.

  Neither on the next day nor on those that followed was there any sign of Tommy’s mouse. Meanwhile Flora was getting into the swing of the spring term. The bookshelf was proving to be a great success, both as a home and as a vantage point. By peeping out at various spots between the loosely stacked books, Flora the Lower Junior could see much more than had Flora the Infant, stuck in the hole in the wall.

  Now, as well as surveying the teacher’s desk, she could also see what a number of children were doing at their work-tables. There were more snatches of new books for her to read, and by watching carefully during maths lessons, Flora came gradually to understand the symbols that stood for different numbers. Also there was a large calendar on the opposite wall, with the dates in very big red figures, and by studying these, Flora learned to count. But not, of course, beyond 31.

  While the children were in school, Flora was as happy as could be, busy with her lessons. And at playtime or during the lunch hour, when the classroom was empty, she would leave the bookshelf and scuttle about, climbing on to the tables and studying any book that had been left open. In this way she learned a number of things not normally known to mice.

  For example, she read that the earth went round the sun, that David slew Goliath, that Paris was the capital of France, and that Henry VIII had six wives. She did not understand the full meaning of these interesting facts, but she stored them away in her memory in case they should come in useful one day.

  Food, now that she was the only schoolmouse in the place, was much easier to come by. She soon learned the order in which the cleaning ladies did the hall and the various classrooms after school, and she usually contrived to nip round ahead of them, picking up the crumbs and bits of food that the children had dropped.

  It was only when the school was empty of people and night fell that Flora was less than comfortable. Partly, she was lonely. She had always been independent by nature, but she found herself missing her parents and wondering about the nine new mousekins she had never as yet set eyes on. Where were they all now?

  Partly, she was afraid, as she thought about her own nine brothers and sisters, all dead and gone, and particularly of Sweet William who had died in the very classroom in which she now lived.

  One stormy night of thunder and lightning, when the wind was howling around the old school, Flora sat remembering his horrible groans. What if the ghost of Sweet William should appear to me, she thought? She peered out between her books and, as she did so, a flash of lightning lit up, just for a second, the Lower Junior classroom. But in that second Flora saw clearly the figure that even now was crossing the floor towards her.

  It was the figure of a mouse, a mouse whose eyes shone blood-red in the glare of light, a mouse whose coat was not the grey-brown of other, ordinary mice, but a pure ghastly ghostly white!

  EIGHT

  In Which Buck Moves In

  Flora let out a squeal of terror.

  ‘Keep away from me, Sweet William, keep away!’ she squeaked, and a grumpy voice answered, ‘Who are you calling Sweet William?’

  Do ghosts talk, thought Flora?

  ‘Are you a real mouse?’ she said.

  ‘Of course I am,’ said the grumpy voice.

  ‘But you’re white.’

  ‘So what? Lots of pet mice are white.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Flora. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘I dare say there are a lot of things you don’t know,’ said the white mouse.

  Flora was rather hurt at this. I bet I know more than he does, she thought, for her nose now told her she was addressing a male. She remembered something she had learned that very afternoon.

  ‘I know the name of the mother of the Queen,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

  ‘No,’ said the white mouse. ‘What is it?’

  ‘The Queen Mother.’

  The white mouse made no reply to this piece of information. Another lightning flash showed Flora that he had turned his back on her and was sitting up and cleaning his whiskers.

  He is rather rude, Flora thought.

  After a while he said, ‘Well, what’s your name?’

  ‘Flora. What’s yours?’

  ‘Mother always called me “Buck”,’ said the white mouse.

  ‘Buck’, thought Flora. That’s silly. That’s like a pig calling her son ‘Boar’, or a cow calling hers ‘Bull’.

  ‘Why?’ she said.

  ‘Because I was the only boy among six of us. She gave my five sisters pretty names, but she just called me “Buck”, and Buck has stuck, worse luck.’ He doesn’t sound very happy, Flora thought. She ran down the wall beneath the bookshelf and approached the stranger.

  ‘You don’t sound very happy,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not,’ said Buck, ‘and nor would you be in my place. A couple of weeks ago I was living comfortably in a pet shop, warm and clean and well fed. And then I was picked out – held up by my tail, I’ll have you know – and given to a stupid boy. I could tell by the way he handled me that he knew nothing about animals, and then, to cap it all, he put me in a box and brought me to this place.’

  ‘And you escaped?’ said Flora.

  ‘Yes, and I’ve been trying to keep out of sight since. At least I’m free. The last thing I want is for that stupid boy to find me again. By the way, you’re the first mouse I’ve met here.’

  ‘I’m the only mouse in the school,’ said Flora.

  ‘So this is a school, is it?’ said Buck.

  ‘Yes,’ said Flora. ‘It’s a place where they teach young human beings to read and write and do sums and stuff like that.’

  ‘Reading? Writing? Sums? Don’t know what you mean,’ said Buck. ‘But it explains why there are so many of the noisy creatures about. It’s a wonder that none of them have spotted me yet.’

  Especially as you’re white, Flora thought.

  The storm had moved away while they were talking, the thunder distant now, and the wind’s howl had dropped to a mere humming. Through the tall windows of the Lower Junior classroo
m came the first light of dawn, and Buck ceased his grooming and turned his pink eyes on Flora.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Now I can see you properly. My night sight is very poor, I’m afraid – it’s the same with all us pink-eyed whites, you know. We’re none of us blessed with good vision.’

  Flora, whose sight was excellent by day or night, immediately felt sorry for him. And that was not all she felt. How handsome he is, she thought, so large and sleek. And those wonderful red eyes – they make me go quite weak at the knees. And that gleaming coat of his, white as the driven snow – how beautiful it is. And how dangerous! It can only be a matter of time before he will be recaptured, she said to herself, so conspicuous is he. And then I shall lose him. And I don’t want to.

  While she was thinking all these thoughts, Buck continued to stare at her without speaking. Then he said, ‘Why do you live by yourself in the school?’

  ‘I’m a schoolmouse,’ Flora said.

  ‘Yes, but why are you alone?’ said Buck. ‘I mean, I should have thought you’d have had lots of admirers, pretty girl like you.’

  ‘No,’ said Flora.

  ‘Oh,’ said Buck.

  There was quite a long silence as the two so different-looking mice crouched on the classroom floor, in broad daylight now.

  At last Flora spoke.

  ‘Buck,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I may call you Buck?’

  ‘Of course, Flora.’

  ‘Are you planning to stay here, in the school?’

  ‘Certainly I am,’ said Buck. ‘You, who have been free all your life, to go where you like and do what you please, can’t imagine the joy of freedom to someone like me. My life so far has been one of imprisonment, but no longer.’