The Angel of Nitshill Road

by Anne Fine

  Also by Anne Fine

  Bill’s New Frock

  How to Write Really Badly

  Saving Miss Mirabelle

  Anneli the Art Hater

  ‘The Chicken Gave it to Me’

  Ivan the Terrible

  Genie, Genie, Genie

  Press Play

  You can visit Anne Fine’s website

  www.annefine.co.uk

  and download free bookplates from

  www.myhomelibrary.org

  First published in Great Britain 1992

  by Methuen Children’s Books

  This edition published 2010

  by Egmont UK Limited

  239 Kensington High Street

  London W8 6SA

  Text copyright © Anne Fine 1992

  Illustrations copyright © Kate Aldous 1992

  The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted

  ISBN 978 1 4052 3320 0

  eBook ISBN 978 1 7803 1164 7

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Group

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  Contents

  1 Until the angel came . . .

  2 ‘Why are you all staring at me?’

  3 ‘Comfy as a cloud . . .’

  4 ‘Stuck again.’

  5 ‘Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat!’

  6 ‘Normal.’

  7 Round robin

  8 The Book of Deeds

  9 ‘Only a joke. Only a game.’

  10 Goodbye, Celeste

  ‘And the angel did wondrously . . .’

  Judges, 13

  1

  Until the angel came . . .

  Until the angel came, there were three terribly unhappy children at Nitshill Road School: Penny, Mark and Marigold.

  Shall we take Penny first?

  Penny was plump. If you weren’t friends with her, you might even say that she was getting on for fat. She had a pretty face, and lovely hair, and she was bright enough in class. But as the hands of the clock rolled round towards playtime she’d get a horrible feeling, as if her stomach was being gripped by a hard, invisible hand. However boring the lesson was, she wanted it to go on for ever and ever. Inside the classroom she was safe. Outside, Barry Hunter might go wheeling past, his arms stuck out like jet-plane wings, making the usual big show of having to swerve to avoid her.

  ‘Beware of the mountain! Danger! Danger! The moving mountain is coming this way!’

  ‘He’s just stupid,’ said Lisa, her friend. ‘Ignore him.’

  ‘You must treat him with the contempt he deserves,’ said her father.

  ‘Some people are just born pig-ignorant,’ said her gran.

  But Penny still felt terribly unhappy.

  And so did Mark. Mark was small for his age. He had strange sticky-up hair, and he wore glasses thick as bottle-ends. He gnawed his fingernails and his pencils, and fussed and fidgeted, and even when he finally stopped racketing around the classroom and tried to sit down and work – not very well – he still got on everyone’s nerves. But only Barry Hunter knew how to push him and push him and push him, till he flew into a temper.

  ‘Mark the Martian!’ he’d call from behind, imitating the rather peculiar stiff way Mark walked.

  ‘Bionic eyes!’ he’d shout, swooping up and peering through the thick lenses of Mark’s spectacles.

  ‘Controls not working properly?’ he’d jeer whenever Mark dropped a ball, or missed a kick, or ran into a wall by mistake.

  And sooner or later, unless the bell rang in time, Mark lost his temper – not like you or me, just getting red in the face and yelling, ‘Oh, shut up, Barry Hunter! You’re so stupid!’ No. Mark went haywire, right out of control. With tears of rage spurting behind his glasses, he’d scream and howl and rush at Barry Hunter, trying to tear out chunks of his hair. Everyone turned to stare at him clawing and kicking and yelling. Some couldn’t help grinning quietly to themselves, but Barry Hunter laughed out loud. He was so big, he could hold Mark at arm’s length and watch him flailing about like a windmill in a high gale.

  Then he’d tease him some more. ‘Now, now, now! Temper, temper!’

  Mark’s elder sister said:

  ‘Just stay right away from him, Mark. Then maybe he won’t bother you.’

  The teachers said:

  ‘Really, Mark brings a lot of it on himself. He has to learn a bit of self-control. They’ll have to sort themselves out.’

  Mark’s mother said:

  ‘I’m going up to see the school if it doesn’t stop.’

  It didn’t stop.

  The third child was Marigold. Nobody knew that Marigold was unhappy. She never looked particularly sad, but then again she never looked particularly happy. In fact, she never looked anything. A portrait painter would have had no trouble at all with Marigold. Her face never cracked into a smile, or darkened with a scowl. People had tried to make friends with her but they never got very far. She’d be away from school for a whole week, but only shrug when you asked what had been wrong with her. She’d hear your secrets, but she’d never tell you hers. In fact, come to think of it, she hardly ever spoke, even when Mr Fairway sighed over her slipshod and unfinished work, or Barry Hunter and his gang tormented her in the playground.

  ‘Where do you live, Marigold? Is it that really smelly street we see you walking down after school?’

  Marigold didn’t answer. Others did.

  ‘Push off, Barry Hunter,’ said some of the girls. ‘Leave Marigold alone. Don’t be so mean.’

  ‘You don’t exactly live in a palace yourself,’ said the others.

  But when the girls turned to smile at Marigold, she’d simply drift away, not even saying thanks. What was the point of sticking up for someone who doesn’t care? You might as well leave her alone and get on with your own games.

  ‘She can always join in if she wants,’ they said to one another.

  ‘She doesn’t mix at all,’ the teachers said.

  ‘I’d try and do something about it,’ said the head teacher. ‘But, honestly, she doesn’t seem all that unhappy. I’m sure in this school we’ve got worse.’

  But she was wrong. These were, by far, the most unhappy children in the school.

  Until the angel came.

  2

  ‘Why are you all staring at me?’

  Nobody thought she was an angel at first. Why should they? They were all milling about in the playground one morning before school began, when suddenly beside the high arched gates appeared a girl with a cloud of hair so gleaming bright that those who were standing near stared.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘I’ve never seen her before.’

  ‘She must be new.’

  And she did look new, in a way. Everything about her glowed like a freshly-minted coin. Her dress was so crisp it might have been ironed twice – inside and out. Her socks looked as if they had been pulled from the packet only a moment before. Her shoes were shop-shiny.

  But she didn’t look new in the other way. Most people look a bit nervous when they show up on their first morning at school, especially when it isn’t even the first day of term, and they know everyone else will have had weeks and weeks, and maybe years, to find their way about and make good friends and learn the teachers’ names. This newcomer didn’t look in the slightest bit apprehensive. She was gazing around her as calm as you please. She looked at the stained brick walls, the peeling paint,
the grimy windows and all the dustbins lined up along the wall. She read the rain-streaked sign over the door.

  NITSHILL ROAD SCHOOL

  Had she come all by herself?

  By now, almost everyone in the playground (except for Marigold) had turned to look at her.

  The new girl spread her hands and said in a ringing voice, clear as a bell: ‘Why are you all staring at me? Am I fearfully late?’

  Left to herself, Penny might have giggled. But Lisa poked her sharply in the ribs and, stepping forward, asked the girl with the shining cloud of hair:

  ‘Have you come all by yourself?’

  The newcomer gave a little shrug.

  ‘My father was here with me, but he had to fly.’

  Now it was Penny’s turn to poke Lisa, to try to stop her giggling.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Celeste.’

  ‘Celeste?’

  They didn’t mean to be so rude. It just popped out.

  The gold hair shimmered as Celeste tossed her head.

  ‘It could have been worse,’ she confided. ‘Daddy was about to name me Angelica, but Granny swooped over just in time, and dashed the pen from his hand.’

  Now people were gathering from all over the playground and standing, ears on stalks, in a ring round Celeste.

  ‘What school do you come from?’

  ‘I don’t come from any at all. I’ve never been to school before.’

  ‘What – never?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Celeste made a little face.

  ‘I wasn’t well enough. I had a million headaches, and I was so thin Granny says I could have got lost in a cucumber sandwich. My wobbly knees refused to carry me, and all the doctors said I’d never make old bones.’

  She smiled seraphically.

  ‘Then I got better. And so here I am.’

  And there she was. But what to do with her? Clearly, she ought to be handed over to one of the teachers. So Penny stood on one side of her and Lisa on the other, and they started to march her, like a prisoner between guards, over the playground and right across Barry Hunter’s flight path.

  He saw them coming.

  Penny’s hand tightened round her bag of crisps. Oh, please don’t, she thought. Not now. Not with someone new watching.

  But already he was screeching round in one of his wide curves.

  ‘Emergency! Emergency! The moving mountain is looming out of the mist! Swerve to avoid a crash! Boy, is she huge!’

  Celeste stopped walking. She turned to Penny, and asked pleasantly:

  ‘Poor boy. Is he touched with the feather of madness?’

  Penny couldn’t even try to answer. For one thing she was forcing back hot tears of embarrassment and shame. And for another, she’d never dare say anything about Barry Hunter to someone she didn’t know, in case it got back to him and made him worse.

  But Lisa wasn’t worried.

  ‘That’s Barry Hunter,’ she was telling Celeste. ‘He’s a big bully. He bullies everyone.’

  Again, Celeste stopped to look back. Now Barry Hunter was tormenting Mark, snatching his pencil-box from him as he steered past.

  ‘Give it back!’ Mark said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That box. It’s mine. Give it back.’

  Mark stamped over the playground after Barry. But Barry was quicker on his feet. Prancing and dancing backwards as Mark advanced, he held the box a few inches from Mark’s grasping fingers.

  ‘Say please!’

  ‘It’s my box. You snatched it. Give it back!’

  ‘Manners! Say please.’

  The bell was ringing now.

  ‘Give it back.’

  Mr Fairway appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Give it back!’

  Mark was almost in tears.

  ‘Say please,’ tormented Barry.

  ‘Please,’ muttered Mark.

  ‘A bit louder. I can’t hear you.’

  ‘Please,’ shouted Mark in desperation.

  ‘That’s not polite,’ said Barry. ‘Now say it nicely.’

  Mark was about to launch himself on his tormentor when suddenly Barry Hunter let out a scream of pain and swirled about, dropping the pencil-box and clutching the back of his leg.

  ‘Who did that?’ Barry yelped.

  Celeste was standing right behind, eyeing him steadily.

  Mr Fairway was very close now. ‘What’s going on over here?’ he demanded.

  Barry knew when to cut his losses. He was about to melt away when Celeste’s ringing tones stopped everyone in their tracks.

  ‘I do believe I bit him,’ she was telling the teacher.

  Mr Fairway was astonished.

  ‘Bit him? But why?’

  Celeste spread her hands and said vaguely, ‘Such herds of new faces. One cannot like them all . . .’

  The bell rang once again. Mr Fairway brushed his hand through his hair.

  ‘Now this isn’t a very good start, is it, Celeste?’

  Celeste turned her angelic face up towards him and said cheerfully:

  ‘Oh, scold me if you must. But not so hard I cry, because once I start, I weep buckets.’

  Mr Fairway let out a soft moan of horror. He was still standing wondering what to do when the head teacher’s voice floated over from the doorway.

  ‘Everyone in line!’ Mrs Brown was shouting.

  They all obeyed at once, even Barry Hunter. Lisa took Celeste’s hand and led her over to stand next to Penny. Mark fetched up at the very end of the line as usual, fiddling with his pencil-box and dropping bits and pieces all over the tarmac. But everyone else, even Marigold, stood quietly staring at Celeste.

  And no one stared harder than Mr Fairway.

  3

  ‘Comfy as a cloud . . .’

  Afterwards, no one could remember quite who it was who first guessed she was a real angel. There were enough clues, of course. Tracey overheard Mrs Brown complaining that Celeste had dropped ‘out of the blue’. When Ian took the register to the school office he heard the secretary telling Miss Featherstone that the new girl had a ‘heavenly’ accent. And Mr Fairway was reported to have muttered that Celeste was having ‘a bit of trouble coming down to earth’.

  Then Lisa remembered that Celeste’s father hadn’t walked off that first morning. Or driven. He’d flown!

  And that reminded Penny. How had Celeste’s granny got there in time to stop her being given the wrong name?

  She’d swooped.

  The little group who chummed down Nitshill Road had a chat at the corner.

  ‘So what did Celeste’s father want to call her, anyway?’

  Penny pushed the sweet she was sucking into the pouch of her cheek, out of the way.

  ‘Angelica, she told us.’

  ‘Angelica!’

  Another clue!

  Tracey raced back just as the bell was ringing for afternoon school. As they pushed and shoved their way back into the classroom, she whispered to everyone round her:

  ‘Guess what Celeste means! I looked it up in our Name Your Baby book. Celeste means “from heaven”.’

  They all peeped at Celeste. Just at that moment she was gazing up out of her frizzy halo of bright hair, and telling Mr Fairway:

  ‘No, truly, I know this chair’s old enough to have a beard, and wobbles frightfully. But it’s as comfy as a cloud!’

  Comfy as a cloud? Penny sneaked a crisp out of the bag on her lap and thought about the one and only time she’d ever gone on holiday by plane. She’d flattened her face against the small plastic window, and seen beneath her a whole land of sunlit fleecy clouds, so puffy and thick you’d think you could bounce on them forever.

  So had Celeste –? Did Celeste –?

  And Penny wasn’t the only one wondering. The whispers ran round the room.

  ‘Comfy as a cloud!’

  ‘That settles it! How else would anybody know?’

  ‘You only have to look at her, really . . .’

  Exc
ept for Marigold, they were all looking at her now. There she sat on her little wobbly chair. Her face glowed as if it were lit from inside with a candle. Her hair shone round her smiling face. She looked like all the angels they had ever seen in books, and films and paintings.

  And clearly Mr Fairway thought so too. He didn’t treat her just like one of them. Oh, he may have tried his best. But he couldn’t do it. It never seemed to work. Somehow it always went wrong, because of her. She wasn’t like them. She was different.

  Take the day she got up from her desk in the middle of spelling.

  Mr Fairway turned round from the board.

  ‘Celeste?’

  She waved an airy hand.

  ‘Don’t let me distract you,’ she told him. ‘I’m just off to water this poor plant. It’s simply gasping.’

  ‘Please sit down, Celeste,’ Mr Fairway said. ‘This is a lesson, and the plant can wait.’

  Celeste sat down.

  ‘It’s your decision, of course,’ she told him kindly. ‘But really, without water, that poor plant is not long for this world.’

  From that moment on, no one could concentrate on a single word Mr Fairway was saying. They all kept glancing at the poor primula wilting on the windowsill. Even Mr Fairway found that time and again his eyes were drawn back to its parched and drooping leaves.

  And in the end he cracked.

  ‘Go on, then,’ he told Celeste. ‘Water it if you must. But be quick about it.’

  She’d done it in a flash.

  The next day, when he came in with the register, she was on her feet, busily buffing away at the top of her desk with a soft cloth.

  ‘What’s that peculiar smell?’ asked Mr Fairway.

  ‘Marigold,’ sniggered Barry Hunter loudly. Mr Fairway pretended that he hadn’t heard, but Celeste looked up anxiously.

  ‘What on earth are you doing, Celeste?’ Mr Fairway demanded.

  She pushed her hair back from her face and shrugged.

  ‘Heaven knows, I’m not a brilliant housekeeper myself,’ she admitted. ‘But really, the cleaning in this school is a disgrace! The litter might just as well be a carpet, the way it’s all over the floors. And as for the top of this desk, well, I’m afraid that yesterday I could hardly bring myself to rest a tired elbow on it. So I’m polishing it nicely.’