Unexpected Twist Page 2

  As she rushed towards the door, Harry walked in. He nodded.

  Shona nodded back. “Is it in here?” she asked.

  “What?” Harry replied.

  “English,” Shona said. “It said on the thingy that because of the flooding in North Block, it was over here.”

  “Yep,” said Harry.

  Harry knew and Shona knew that they were supposed to be sitting next to each other, but it felt really awkward to sit down next to each other in an empty room. Just the two of them. So Harry stood in the middle of the room, feeling more awkward than if he had gone to sit down.

  Shona seemed less bothered than him and said, “Is it OK? This school?”

  “Yeah,” said Harry in as unenthusiastic voice as he could manage. “Yeah, OK. You know.”

  Shona looked straight at him in a way that Harry found quite tricky. “Teachers OK?” Shona asked. He noticed her eyes.

  “Oh yeah. They’re OK,” Harry said, “one or two are … you know…”

  A thought came into Shona’s head about teachers. You’re in school with them all day, and you think you know them, but behind the scenes they’re saying and doing loads of stuff you never know about. You don’t even know what they say to each other when they go to meetings.

  The others started to come into the room with stories about how they got turned away from North Block: Sunil and Crayton got stopped by Mr Grimble on the Causeway, and Désol’é dropped her French book in the pond. (It was OK; the plastic cover kept it mostly dry before she fished it out again.)

  A good few minutes after everyone had arrived, Miss Cavani dashed in, stuffing her phone into her bag. She was furious. She had been told that the class was in room 3.05 and had gone there instead, she explained. No matter. She was here now. She pushed back the hair on the sides of her head and tightened her lips.

  Was she really that furious about room 3.05, or was it something she had just heard on her phone?

  “Sorry, X10, got caught in a meeting. Just ought to pass this on to you: from now on, the school can’t provide food on the premises for students, apart from for teachers. As you are not allowed off the premises during lunchtime, and you’re not allowed to bring any food on to the premises, it’s going to be – how shall I put it? – a long day.”

  There was an immediate outbreak of indignant noise. It was a roar of outrage.

  Miss Cavani held up her hand and demanded silence. “We’ll discuss this later. In the meantime, let’s read on. This time, let’s break it up a little. Shona, would you read the narration?”

  Shona anxiously shook her head.

  “Rory?”

  Rory nodded.

  “So this narrator – “Charles Dickens”, we can call him, if you like – is Rory; Rasheda, you read Mrs Mann; Crayton, please read Mr Bumble; and Désol’é, you can read Oliver Twist.”

  The indignant noise about food did subside when Miss Cavani had asked for silence, but it simmered along through the reading.

  CLASS X10 READING COMPREHENSION

  The parish authorities sent Oliver to a branch workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor laws rolled about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female, who received sevenpence-halfpenny per small head per week. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate idea of what was good for herself. So, she appropriated the greater part of the weekly allowance to her own use, and consigned the children to even less than was originally provided for them. .

  It cannot be expected that this system of farming would produce any very extraordinary or luxuriant crop. Oliver Twist’s ninth birthday found him a pale, thin child, and decidedly small. But nature or inheritance had implanted a good sturdy spirit in Oliver’s breast. It had had plenty of room to expand, thanks to his spare diet. He was keeping his birthday in the coal cellar with a select party of two other young gentleman, who, after participating with him in receiving a sound thrashing, had been locked up for atrociously presuming to be hungry, when Mrs Mann, the good lady of the house, was unexpectedly startled by the sight of Mr Bumble, the beadle, striving to undo the wicket of the garden gate.

  “Goodness gracious! Is that you, Mr Bumble, sir?” said Mrs Mann, thrusting her head out of the window in well-affected ecstasies of joy. “(Susan, take Oliver and them two brats upstairs, and wash ’em directly.) – My heart alive! Mr Bumble, how glad I am to see you, surely!”

  Now, Mr Bumble was a fat man, and a bad-tempered one; so, instead of responding to this open-hearted salutation in a kindred spirit, he gave the little wicket a tremendous shake, and then bestowed upon it a kick which could have emanated from no leg but a beadle’s.

  “Lor, only think,” said Mrs Mann, running out – for the three boys had been removed by this time – “only think of that! That I should have forgotten that the gate was bolted on the inside, on account of them dear children! Walk in, sir; walk in, pray, Mr Bumble, do, sir.”

  “Lead the way in, Mrs Mann, for I come on business, and have something to say.” Mrs Mann ushered the beadle into a small parlour with a brick floor; placed a seat for him; and officiously deposited his cocked hat and cane on the table before him.

  “Now don’t you be offended at what I’m a going to say,” observed Mrs Mann with captivating sweetness. “You’ve had a long walk, you know, or I wouldn’t mention it. Now, will you take a little drop of somethink, Mr Bumble?”

  “Not a drop. Not a drop,” said Mr Bumble, waving his right hand in a dignified, but placid manner.

  “I think you will,” said Mrs Mann, who had noticed the tone of the refusal, and the gesture that had accompanied it. “Just a leetle drop, with a little cold water, and a lump of sugar.”

  Mr Bumble coughed.

  “Now, just a leetle drop,” said Mrs Mann persuasively.

  “What is it?” inquired the beadle.

  “Why, it’s what I’m obliged to keep a little of in the house, to put into the blessed infants’ Daffy, when they ain’t well, Mr Bumble,” replied Mrs Mann as she opened a corner cupboard, and took down a bottle and glass. “It’s gin. I’ll not deceive you, Mr B. It’s gin.”

  “Do you give the children Daffy, Mrs Mann?” inquired Bumble, following with his eyes the interesting process of mixing.

  “Ah, bless ’em, that I do, dear as it is,” replied the nurse. “I couldn’t see ’em suffer before my very eyes, you know, sir.”

  “No,” said Mr Bumble approvingly, “no, you could not. You are a humane woman, Mrs Mann.” (Here she set down the glass.) “I shall take an early opportunity of mentioning it to the board, Mrs Mann.” (He drew it towards him.) “You feel as a mother, Mrs Mann.” (He stirred the gin and water.) “I drink your health with cheerfulness, Mrs Mann”; and he swallowed half of it.

  “And now about business,” said the beadle, taking out a leather pocketbook. “The child that was half-baptized Oliver Twist is nine year old today.”

  “Bless him!” interposed Mrs Mann, inflaming her left eye with the corner of her apron.

  “And notwithstanding a offered reward of ten pound, which was afterwards increased to twenty pound. Notwithstanding the most superlative, and, I may say, supernat’ral exertions on the part of this parish,” said Bumble, “we have never been able to discover who is his father, or what his mother’s settlement, name, or condition was.”

  Mrs Mann raised her hands in astonishment; but added, after a moment’s reflection, “How comes he to have any name at all, then?”

  The beadle drew himself up with great pride, and said, “I inwented it.”

  “You, Mr Bumble!”

  “I, Mrs Mann. We name our fondlings in alphabetical order. The last was a S – Swubble, I named him. This was a T – Twist, I named him. The next one comes will be Unwin, and the next Vilkins. I have got names ready made to the end of the alphabet, and
all the way through it again, when we come to Z.”

  “Why, you’re quite a literary character, sir!” said Mrs Mann.

  “Well, well,” said the beadle, evidently gratified with the compliment; “perhaps I may be. Perhaps I may be, Mrs Mann.” He finished the gin and water, and added, “Oliver being now too old to remain here, the board have determined to have him back into the workhouse. I have come out myself to take him there. So let me see him at once.”

  “I’ll fetch him directly,” said Mrs Mann, leaving the room for that purpose. Oliver, having had by this time as much of the outer coat of dirt which encrusted his face and hands removed, as could be scrubbed off in one washing, was led into the room.

  “Make a bow to the gentleman, Oliver,” said Mrs Mann.

  Oliver made a bow, which was divided between the beadle on the chair, and the hat on the table.

  “Will you go along with me, Oliver?” said Mr Bumble, in a majestic voice.

  Oliver was about to say that he would go along with anybody with great readiness, when, glancing upward, he caught sight of Mrs Mann, who had got behind the beadle’s chair, and was shaking her fist at him with a furious expression. He took the hint at once, for the fist had been too often impressed upon his body not to be deeply impressed upon his recollection.

  “Will she go with me?” inquired poor Oliver.

  “No, she can’t,” replied Mr Bumble. “But she’ll come and see you sometimes.”

  This was no very great consolation to the child. Young as he was, however, he had sense enough to make a show of feeling great regret at going away. It was no very difficult matter for the boy to call tears into his eyes. Hunger and recent abuse are great assistants if you want to cry; and Oliver cried very naturally indeed. Mrs Mann gave him a thousand embraces, and what Oliver wanted a great deal more: a piece of bread and butter, so he would not seem too hungry when he got to the workhouse. With the slice of bread in his hand, and the little brown-cloth parish cap on his head, Oliver was then led away by Mr Bumble from the wretched home where one kind word or look had never lighted the gloom of his infant years. And yet he burst into an agony of childish grief, as the cottage gate closed after him. Wretched as were the little companions in misery he was leaving behind, they were the only friends he had ever known; and a sense of his loneliness in the great wide world sank into the child’s heart for the first time.

  Sunil sat back. “Miss. About this thing and the food in school.”

  “Yes, Sunil?” Miss Cavani said, with one eyebrow slightly raised.

  “Is it true? Or did you make that up?”

  A buzz went round the room. Though Miss Cavani liked students to be “forthright”, as she put it, most knew not to confront her quite as directly as Sunil just had.

  Miss Cavani glanced at her watch. “We’ve got two minutes left. In your Talk Groups. Was Miss Cavani telling the truth? Or did she make that up about the food in school? If it’s true, fine. If I made it up, why? Anything to do with Oliver Twist, perhaps..?” And up went the Cavani eyebrow in a question-mark curve.

  Everyone had something to say. If they had been asked that question straight after Miss Cavani had told them that they wouldn’t be allowed to eat during the school day, while the teachers could, they would almost all have said she had been telling the truth. But now … but now? It was bogus, wasn’t it? It was one of her “think about it” things that connected up in some Miss-Cavani-kind-of-a-way with what they were supposed to be working on.

  She clapped her hands. “I’ll take a vote. All those in favour of Miss Cavani telling the truth, raise your hand.”

  Two people raised their hands.

  “All those in favour of Miss Cavani having made it all up, raise your hand.”

  It was everyone else.

  The bell went and Miss Cavani swept out, to cries of “Well, which is it, Miss?”

  “Is it true, Miss?”

  “If it’s not true, why did you say it, Miss?”

  At the end of school, Shona gathered her stuff together, and felt a knot form in her stomach at the thought of going back to the flat they were moving out of. Dad had started to pack stuff into bags, he was going on about the “elex” – the electricity – as Shona knew only too well as he was always on at her to switch off the lights as it “used up the juice”, another of his electricity words. It wasn’t home any more. Best stay away for a bit, she thought. She felt the key on the string round her neck. She could get in when she felt like it. Which she didn’t feel like. I know, she thought, I’ll go and see Nan.

  In her mind’s eye, she saw Nan standing at her stall at the market. Maybe she’d ask Shona to open up some boxes, or go fetch her a cup of tea. Maybe even serve the punters. She could do homework later on, sometime.

  Somewhere.

  Yes, that’s what she’d do. Go see Nan.

  As she turned left at the school gates, to head towards the high street, she saw Désol’é on the other side of the road. Her face was down and she held a paper hankie up by her nose. It looked as if she was crying.

  Shona strolled up to the market stall, just as Nan was being handed a box by a large man. Nan quickly shoved it under the stall and then, the moment the two caught sight of Shona, the man slipped away into the stream of people filling the road and Nan put on the look of someone doing nothing.

  “Not packing up your stuff ready for the move?” Nan asked Shona a bit sharply.

  “No,” said Shona.

  “You’re looking perky,” Nan said, even though Shona felt just the opposite.

  “Can I help you for a bit?” Shona asked

  “That’d be lovely, angel, but I tell you, I’ll die if I don’t get a cup a tea in me,” said Nan and handed Shona some money.

  Shona knew just what to do: the Kettle Caff was, very conveniently, only a few steps from Nan’s stall. Shona loved it in there, the smell of chips and kebabs and hot pitta bread mingling in her nose.

  Zeynep knew who Shona was, and who the tea was for. She smiled and poured it into a paper cup, snapped on the lid, put a cardboard collar round it to stop it burning Shona’s hand, and passed it to her.

  Shona tried to give Zeynep the money, but she waved it away. Shona was confused: she had never done that before.

  Zeynep moved Shona away. She seemed upset. It seemed like Zeynep knew something, or was saying something … and yet wasn’t.

  Back at the stall, Shona handed over the hot tea, followed by the money.

  “What’s this?” said Nan, looking at the money.

  “Zeynep wouldn’t take it.”

  Nan looked away and muttered, “She’s being kind.”

  “Oh, yes,” Shona said, not understanding what was going on.

  “I might as well tell you. I’ve been up the hospital, and this time it’s serious.”

  Shona put her hand on Nan’s arm, and Nan gave her a small smile in return. Nan had been struggling for a while now with something bad – Shona wasn’t exactly sure what, and this wasn’t the first time things had got serious. There had been talk of “it coming back”. Shona kept her hand on Nan’s arm, and Nan seemed to like it being there.

  Shona wondered whether giving Nan a cup of tea for nothing could make things any better for Nan. But, then, she had known for as long as she had known anything, round Nan’s stall a lot of things happened this way: “I’ll do you a favour if you do me a favour” or, “I won’t say anything about that, if you don’t say anything about the other thing…”, all done with a nod here and a “Don’t ask!” there.

  Chapter 3

  How much time do we spend in corridors? Shona wondered.

  She was walking along the upper corridor in North Block, having already run down the Causeway – a path that ran between two slightly smelly ponds – through the Passage, and down the short tunnel under the track to the East Field, when a policewoman in a high-vis jacket stepped to one side to let her through. She smiled at Shona, and Shona came out of the tunnel thinking, I’m getting
the hang of all these directions and distances. On past the Unit – whatever that was – and just as she was thinking that she had done OK – or better than OK – to have done this, a loud voice caught up with her.

  “Who are you?”

  Shona turned.

  It was a vigorous young teacher who Shona noticed must have cut himself shaving that morning. As Shona hadn’t replied in less than half of a second, he asked the same question, but more loudly: “Who ARE you?”

  Shona felt herself shrink, and shrinking wasn’t very helpful in getting her to speak. So, she just stood in front of the man with the shaving cut.

  “Where’s your lanyard?” he shouted again.

  The lanyard! Mrs Buthelezi had said that the machine that did the photo (or was it the card? or, come to think of it, was it the ribbon?) for the identity lanyard that everyone had to wear was broken. But it didn’t matter – or so Mrs Buthelezi said – because Mrs Buthelezi had sent round a memo saying that Shona wouldn’t be wearing a lanyard while the lanyard machine was broken.

  Somehow or another that piece of information had not reached the man who had cut himself shaving.

  “All students must wear lanyards at all times,” he said to Shona.

  She looked at him.

  He repeated what he had just said: “All students must wear lanyards at ALL times!” – as if saying “ALL” a bit louder would make it much clearer.

  Shona went on looking at him and now focussed on the scab on his right cheek where his razor had cut his skin. It was slightly moist, as if something inside his cheek was trying to get out.

  “I don’t recognize you,” the man went on.

  Still Shona said nothing. What was there to say? He was just blurting things at her and not waiting to see if there were reasons for stuff. Anyway, he wouldn’t listen if she did give reasons. “You had better come with me to my office,” he said.

  Shona knew this was wrong. The reason why she was in the upper corridor of North Block was that she had to get to a maths lesson which was not actually going to be a lesson, but had been flagged up as a maths test. And whatever else was going on in their lives, the maths teacher, Mr Dur, had said they all had to do the test. Mr Dur had made this sound so important that everyone, especially Shona, felt that missing the test might well result in something like ten years in prison.