Class Act

by Debbie Thomas

  They were lined with trophies of every kind. Brian counted thirty-two in all: gold and silver cups, plates and medals, plaques and rosettes. He went over and read the engravings. National Basketball Champion 1997 said a shiny gold plate. Next to it was a silver tennis trophy for 1999. There were five swimming cups dated from 2000 to 2002. There was a plaque for Golden Goalie 2003, and medals and plates for all sorts of games and sports, from chess to ice skating, Scrabble to pole vaulting, and even a cup that said European Bag Packing Champion 2001.

  ‘These can’t belong to Mr Pottigrew,’ murmured Brian. ‘He’d never be so good at all those things.’ He did a quick – OK, slow – sum in his head. ‘And they’re all less than twenty years old.’ Mr Pottigrew looked about seventy, which meant – after an even slower sum – that he must have been at least fifty when he won them. ‘And anyway, if he was so brilliant at everything, why did he end up being a gardener?’

  ‘For which,’ added Dulcie, ‘I can’t see a single award.’

  Brian stared at the prizes, trying to make sense of them. Had Mr Pottigrew been the world’s most talented fifty-something, then crumpled under the pressure, given it all up and turned to the stress-free art of gardening? Was his deafness a disguise to escape the limelight?

  ‘Hard to believe,’ said Dulcie when he suggested it. ‘And hard to carry off. You’d think some hint of his talent would slip out.’

  Brian pictured the times the football had come Mr Pottigrew’s way at break. When Unbeatable Pete had waved for the ball, the gardener’s return kick had been anything but golden. As a fellow foot-fumbler, Brian had cringed for him every time.

  And even if that had been an act – even if he was mega-talented – it didn’t explain the map with its photo greetings from all round the world to someone whose name began with Q.

  Brian frowned. ‘Perhaps this isn’t Mr Pottigrew’s house. Perhaps he was collecting something from someone called Quentin or Queenie. Perhaps they were out and left it in a rucksack for him, and he had a key to pick it up.’ It wasn’t very convincing, and didn’t explain the freaky garden, but at least it let kind Mr P. off the hook. When it came down to it, his only offence was fake deafness: a little odd, maybe, but hardly a crime.

  Brian tried hard to believe it. His suspicions about the gardener had squeezed his insides, made him feel tight and mean. Now he could leave the old man alone to his funny little ear tricks and weird woodland friend.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said briskly. He had to get over that wall before Quentin or Queenie or whoever came back. How on earth would he explain his snooping? Besides, there was something about this place – the neat, stale gloom – that made him want to be somewhere, anywhere, else. He turned towards the door.

  ‘Eeek!’

  ‘Don’t do that!’ Brian pressed his hand to his ear. ‘What is it now?’

  ‘That lamp. By the sofa. It’s moving!’

  Brian turned back. Cold fingers tickled his spine as he crept over to the lamp. It had looked normal enough from a distance, the shade patterned with butterflies. But now he saw that they weren’t patterns at all. They were real. Bright wings fluttered feebly. Their tiny bodies were stuck onto the shade.

  ‘I can hear them,’ gasped Dulcie, ‘crying and moaning. And, oh, the rug!’

  Brian looked down. The white circle was laced with threads that looped and fanned like dozens of joined-up cobwebs. And stuck to the central point of each web was a live – just about – spider. All over the rug, tiny legs twitched in dying semaphore.

  ‘This is torture.’ Brian’s stomach twisted. What kind of monster would do this for decoration? Bugs they may be, tiny and squashable, with no bigger purpose in life than to scuttle and flutter and lay eggs, but they had nerves which meant feelings and – if they were anything like Dulcie – thoughts and opinions too. To her this must be like a hanging or a crucifixion.

  ‘Do something!’ she squealed. ‘You’ve got to help them.’

  Kneeling down, Brian peered at a spider in the middle of a lace cobweb. Gently he took the little button body between his finger and thumb and tried to jiggle it free. The creature’s legs shuddered, then froze. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.

  What’s that? He bent closer. There was bump near the middle of the rug. He ran his fingertip over a little raised circle. Frowning, he grasped the edge of the rug and pulled it gently away.

  It felt like he’d swallowed a watering can.

  There was a little metal ring attached to the floorboard. And the fifth floorboard across from it was hinged. A trap door!

  With shaking fingers he lifted the lid and stared down a flight of wooden steps.

  CHAPTER 18

  FOUND

  Before he had time to remember that he wasn’t brave or stupid enough to go down, Brian found himself at the bottom of the steps. The walls either side were made of packed earth. Roots stuck out like electric wires. You couldn’t call it a cellar or even a basement; it was too crude, as if a hole had simply been dug in the ground and the wooden steps plonked down. About a metre ahead stood a wooden door. Light escaped round the frame.

  Brian stared at the door, his heart a crazy cricket in his chest. A sensible person would turn round. A sensible person would climb the stairs, leave this madhouse and mega-mad garden and go back home, not listen to the fossil in his ear that was telling him to ‘Go on, try the handle.’

  He licked his lips. A sensible person wouldn’t have a fossil in his ear.

  It’s bound to be locked, he told himself. So when the door opened and he practically fell through, it took a moment to steady himself, and a moment more to recognise the faces staring at him, pale and puffy and not entirely unexpected. Because of course, deep down, he’d known they’d be here. It wasn’t the usual sort of know that happens beforehand (‘I know when I open the door they’ll be here’) but the slightly cheating sort that comes afterwards (‘I knew they would be’). Like the time Sid the Reptile Man visited your school and, the minute he chose someone at random to hold the python, you turned to your best friend and said, ‘I just knew he’d pick Jamie Doyle.’ That was Brian’s kind of know. The unsurprising surprise.

  What was surprising was their unsurprise.

  ‘Oh.’ Alec was sitting at a desk. ‘It’s you.’ He went back to writing.

  Pete was kneeling by the far wall beneath the only two windows in the room. Small and high, they must be at ground level Brian realised. ‘Hey, Braino.’ Then he went back to drawing on the floor with a piece of chalk.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ said Tracy from another desk.

  It seemed obvious, and perhaps a little rude, to say, ‘You.’ So instead Brian looked round the room and tried to make sense of what he saw. But the room made the least sense of all. On the left, desks were arranged in rows of three. Alec and Tracy sat in the front row. The other twenty or so desks were empty. All the desks faced to the right. Opposite them, near the right-hand wall, stood another, bigger desk. Above it hung a whiteboard.

  It was a classroom. But not just any old classroom – theirs. The desks and chairs were the same as those at school. Along the back wall to the left stood a bookshelf, just the same, and next to it a nature table. Identical posters hung on the walls: rules of the class, geometrical shapes and all the charts comparing pupils. There was a waste-paper bin by the door. There was even a cactus on the front desk.

  ‘What is this place?’ He gasped.

  Silence. He tried again. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Writing,’ said Alec.

  ‘Drawing,’ said Pete from the floor.

  ‘Colouring.’ Tracy scowled at him. ‘What are you doing here?’ She wrinkled her nose with such scorn that it took him a moment to remember.

  ‘I’m, uh, here to rescue you.’

  Tracy snorted and went back to colouring.

  ‘Rescue?’ Pete sat back on his heels. ‘From what? We can leave whenever we want.’

  Brian was feeling sillier by the second. ‘So
, ah … why don’t you?’

  ‘Duh.’ Alec’s eyes went wide. ‘Because we don’t want to.’ He put down his pen and leaned back in his chair.

  Brian blinked round the room. What was he missing? ‘Why not?’

  It seemed a fair question. But the way the others rolled their eyes, you’d think he’d asked why chickens don’t eat eggs.

  ‘Because.’ Alec spoke loudly and slowly, as if talking to someone with very little English. ‘We … like it … here. Don’t we … guys?’ The other two nodded theatrically. Pete put down his chalk and lay on his back, tucking his hands behind his head.

  ‘But your parents, the school, the whole village – everyone’s mad with worry!’

  Alec stared into space. Tracy coloured in. Pete gazed at the ceiling.

  ‘I said,’ Brian shouted, ‘they’re mad with worry! Don’t you care?’

  Alec’s grey eyes settled on him lazily. Then he glanced at his watch. ‘Hey, guys, it’s nearly tea time.’

  ‘What?’ Brian scrunched a handful of hair. Missing for days, holed up in this madhouse, families in uproar – and Alec was talking tea time? Had he gone bonkers? Brian ran across the room and grabbed his arm. Talking was clearly pointless. He tried to pull Alec up.

  ‘Get off.’ Alec shook him away. He went back to his writing.

  Brian turned to Tracy. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here.’ He jiggled the back of her chair.

  ‘Hey.’ She glared at him. ‘You ruined my colouring.’

  Over her shoulder, Brian saw a smudge on an otherwise neat invitation. YOU’RE INVITED TO MY PARTY.

  ‘What is this?’ He circled his forehead with his fingertips. ‘Why don’t you want to leave?’

  Pete sat up. ‘We told you. We’re waiting for tea.’ He hugged his knees. ‘Well, not so much tea,’ he ran his tongue along his top lip, ‘as scones.’

  Scones. Why did the word catch in Brian’s brain? Why did it burrow and itch like a tick?

  He looked at his classmates, lounging in a chair, colouring at a desk and sitting on the floor. They had no intention of leaving; he’d never move them by force, and direct questions were getting him nowhere.

  ‘Wow,’ he said carefully. ‘I love scones. What sort?’

  Tracy’s crayon went still. ‘Plain, fruit – any sort.’ She smiled dreamily. Her eyelids drooped.

  Too dreamily. Too droopingly. You’d think she was drunk. Or drugged.

  On scones? Since when were they addictive? And who on earth would want to dope the children?

  A terrible picture popped into Brian’s mind. An old man standing in a doorway with flour on his face. No. Surely not Alf Sandwich, with his gentle ways and thousand kindnesses. Could he really be sneaking into the woods with poisoned teacakes? Brian gripped the back of Tracy’s chair. Never! Of course it couldn’t be Alf. But who, or what, was it?

  He returned to the door. Rubbing his ear with his sleeve, he whispered, ‘Help me, Dulcie.’ Her tiny brain was worth two of his; she’d know what to do. There was no answer. For once she must be completely stumped.

  He tried again. ‘What now?’

  More silence.

  ‘Thanks a million,’ he hissed.

  Alec looked up. ‘What for? It’s not like we invited you for tea.’ He yawned. ‘But I guess you can stay if you want.’

  ‘No.’ Brian held up his hand. ‘Thanks, but I have to go.’

  And quickly. Outnumbered by these numb-brains, he could never drag them out by force. His only hope was to leg it back to Tullybun and fetch the gardaí before whoever was behind all this came back.

  All of which he was just about to do … when whoever was behind all this came back. Hearing a thump, Brian wheeled round to face the door. Something barrelled into him and he was pushed backwards. Losing his balance, he fell onto his bottom. Pain shot up his spine.

  But it was nothing compared to the shriek that shot out of his mouth. ‘Mrs FLORRIS?!’

  CHAPTER 19

  AT YOUR SERVICE

  There was a tangle of legs, a mangle of arms, a wrangle of boy and teacher. Or rather, what seemed to be teacher. The blue blouse, flowery skirt and sensible heels, from which Brian finally managed to escape, certainly suggested Florrie. But he couldn’t be sure because a scarf covered the face.

  ‘’Emme go!’ it squealed.

  Without stopping to think if it was a good idea, Brian leaned over. It took a few moments to undo the knot, thanks to the wriggling head and the wisps of white hair caught in the scarf. After a lot of yanking and shoving – it wouldn’t be kind to say that part of him enjoyed the ouches and yowches – the scarf came loose.

  ‘You!’ She blinked at Brian. ‘And YOU!’ She gasped at the others. They looked at her with vague annoyance: the sort of faces Doctor Who fans would make when disturbed from the Christmas special by the arrival of a distant uncle with a box of dried figs.

  ‘So.’ The teacher glared at Brian. ‘You’re involved with this!’

  ‘What?’ Brian suddenly regretted untying her hands, which had been bound by rope. ‘Of course I’m not, you idiot.’ He bit his top lip. Did he really just say that? Did it really feel so good?

  Her eyebrows jiggled in outrage. ‘How dare you–’

  ‘Shut up!’ That would’ve felt even better if it hadn’t been accompanied by the sound of a key turning. Pushing past her, he grabbed the door handle. ‘No!’ He rattled it uselessly. They were trapped.

  He turned back to the teacher. ‘Who brought you here?’ he asked in a flat voice.

  ‘How should I know?’ she snapped. ‘I couldn’t see a thing. One minute I was locking the staffroom door and the next everything went black.’ She blew her nose on the scarf. ‘Someone grabbed my hands and tied them behind my back. They marched me down the corridor and out the back door. I might’ve been blindfolded, but I know every inch of my school. Then across the garden and through the trees. They pushed me through the back gate and into a car.’

  Pausing to wipe her nose on her sleeve (Brian felt a strange satisfaction at the sight of Florrie-snot), she described the rest of the journey: the car stopping; the door opening; the squelch across muddy ground; the smell of wet woodland; the stumble and tumble into this room.

  ‘Did you hear his voice?’ he said.

  ‘Once or twice. “Hurry up, turn left,” that sort of thing.’ She sniffed. ‘And it was high and squeaky. I think it was a she.’

  ‘Or a he in disguise.’

  Before Florrie could disagree, a voice sang, ‘A he in disguise or a she in disguise? Hee hee, yippee – a me in disguise!’

  The door flew open once more, whacking into Brian. It was his turn to fall on Florrie. Untangling themselves, they wriggled backwards on their bottoms, staring at the figure who’d come in and was locking the door behind him. He slipped the bunch of keys into his anorak pocket.

  ‘YOU!’ Florrie shrieked again. As president of Tullybun’s NUASWIALOWD (Never Use a Short Word if a Long One Will Do) Society, she was really letting herself down. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘You?’ said Mr Pottigrew, staring at Brian. ‘So you’re the one who left the trap door open.’

  ‘You,’ echoed Brian, because he could think of absolutely nothing else to say.

  ‘Me,’ agreed the gardener. ‘And not me!’ He grabbed his beard with one hand and his hair with another. Ripping them off, he threw them across the room. They snagged on the cactus and sat there like vicious candy floss.

  ‘Shot,’ said Pete sitting up on the floor. Alec and Tracy clapped from their desks, completely unruffled by the transformation taking place.

  The old man in the doorway was shedding years by the second. Underneath the wig his hair was the colour of earwax. He wiped his face briskly with his hands. Wrinkles disappeared, revealing a sharp, pale face. He straightened his back. With a grin and a giggle, the crumbly old gardener was turning into a firm young man. Only his eyes stayed the same, darting from Brian to Florrie in bright blue delight.

&nbs
p; The teacher had gone as white as a duck egg. ‘YOU!’ she gasped – for which she really deserved to be stripped of the NUASWIALOWD presidency. ‘I thought there was something familiar about you.’

  ‘But you didn’t think hard enough.’ The old-young man’s voice was indeed high and squeaky. ‘All those months of weeding and grovelling, and you didn’t recognise your star pupil. Oh dear, Mrs F.’ He shook his head sadly. Then he shot forward and shrieked in her face, ‘FAIL!’

  The teacher yelped. She tried to stand up but he clamped his hands on her shoulders. Brian scrambled to his feet, looking frantically at the other children. Alec was sucking his pen. Tracy was cleaning a fingernail with the corner of a card. Pete doodled on the floor. They seemed amazingly unamazed.

  ‘Who …’ Brian chased the questions playing pinball round his head, ‘who are you?’

  The man, whose quick, easy movements put him in his mid-twenties, gave a deep bow. ‘Quincy Queaze, at your service.’

  Somehow Brian doubted that. His mouth opened and closed.

  ‘No need for small talk.’ With one hand still grasping Florrie’s shoulder, Quincy waved the other breezily. ‘I know all about you, Brian O’Bunion. I’ve been watching you over the year. And it’s a lovely surprise to find you here.’

  Brian wished he could agree. His eyes strayed to the locked door.

  ‘Who’d have thought? Of all the people to find me out!’ Quincy squeezed Florrie’s shoulder until his knuckles went white. ‘Pretty smart, hey, Teach? Especially for a lazy loser.’

  ‘Get your hands off me!’ She tried to wriggle free.

  He grabbed her wrists. ‘You see, Brian,’ he said pleasantly, dragging her across the floor to the front desk, ‘no one’s more welcome than you to my party.’ He pulled out a chair behind the desk. ‘I know you don’t get many invitations.’ He plonked the teacher roughly onto the chair and whipped out two pairs of handcuffs from his anorak pocket. ‘And I know you’ve had a tough time at school.’ He handcuffed Mrs Florris’s wrists to the arms of the chair. ‘Believe me, Brian, I understand, because I did too.’ He grabbed her neck in the crook of his elbow. ‘Didn’t I, Teach?’