“All right, Bernie?” says Ruby, smiling like I’ve never seen her smile before. She almost looks like a different person—she’s not in her school uniform and has untied her pigtails, letting her hair fall about her face like a big black mop.
“Bernie?” repeats Dr Babbage.
“You must be Bernie’s granddad!” says Ruby.
“Er, yes, I am. Of course I am. And you are?”
“I’m Ruby. Bernie’s friend from school.”
“Oh!” Dr Babbage’s face lights up. “Frank’s been telling me all about you. Very nice to meet you. Would you like to come in?”
She turns her gaze towards me. “I’ve brought some books for you,” she says, handing me a plastic shopping bag. I take a glance inside - there must be at least a dozen shiny volumes in there. “You can keep them if you like. And I wondered if you want to come for a walk with me, take Trevor round the block?”
I look up to Dr Babbage for approval, and he gives me an excited nod. “What a good idea,” he says, “Don’t be long, though; it’ll be getting dark soon.”
So out we step, Ruby and I, into the cool evening, following the pavement up the hill in the direction of Cheasley High.
“My house is only a ten-minute walk away from yours, did you know that?”
I nod and make a groaning noise. I remember Mr Balls-Willets saying something to that effect during registration yesterday.
“You got your pad with you?” she asks. I shake my head.
“This is going to be one heck of a conversation. Kind of cool, though, being the person that does all the talking.”
We take a narrow lane off the main road, which leads towards a scrubby field. Trevor the puppy stops to sniff every tree and post.
“I like it out here,” says Ruby after a while. “It’s nice and peaceful, nobody to bother you.”
I make a grunt of general agreement, and then she drops a bombshell:
“He’s not really your granddad, is he? That man?”
Oh hell, what do I do now? Do I nod, shake my head, or just settle for looking all stupid and bulgy-eyed? I choose the latter.
“Thought not,” she says, smiling wryly to herself. “Are you adopted or something?”
Help! This is getting worse with each step. To distract Ruby from her enquiries, I kneel rather brusquely and stroke Trevor, giving him my undivided attention.
It doesn’t work. Ruby’s as persistent as a thirsty wasp. She also seems to have an uncanny ability to read my mind. “You haven’t got any parents, have you?”
I shake my head. I’m not a good liar.
“What happened to them?”
I shrug my shoulders. Trevor’s getting a pretty thorough stroke from my quivering hands.
“You don’t know, or you don't care?” says Ruby, kneeling to join us. She gets no response, so she keeps talking. “If you don't know what happened to your parents, then maybe I can find out for you. It could be our project!”
I stand up and appear to take an extraordinary interest in the low scudding clouds. I’m out of my depth here. I’m out of my comfort zone. Are all girls like this?
“How about this?" she continues. "When you get back, write down everything you know; where you come from, why you’ve changed school, all that sort of stuff. And any little snippets you know about your parents. Bring it into school tomorrow for me to read. Then I’ll see what I can do!”
I give her one of my classic boggle-eyed looks.
“It’s what friends are for, Bernie! Helping each other out.”
The wind is whipping across the field and the sky has darkened to the colour of my skin. A bat flits in and out of a copse of gnarled trees, and curious spiky shadows reach out at me from the hedgerows. All of which sounds like the set-up for a something sinister and spooky, but do you know what? An unexpected feeling has come over me, down in my gut. A tingling excitement. Suddenly, standing up from my crouching position and sucking in the air, I realise what it is: I’m free. For these few moments, I’m free; no Dr Babbage, no Stump, no teachers, no nurses. Just me and Ruby and the woods and the fields. It’s wonderful.
On the way back, Ruby apologises for asking all her questions, and tells me a little bit about herself. I listen with interest. She tells me about her previous home on an island called Gibraltar (where there are monkeys!), about her mother dying when she was just three years old, about her father’s moods and brooding silences, which often leave her feeling that she’s done something wrong, and about her dreams of becoming a marine biologist, or possibly an architect, or a vet.
We wave goodbye on the path in front of my house, and I watch her disappear around the corner into Boswell Street. Dr Babbage greets me enthusiastically at the door.
“Frank! I’ve tuned the TV and found a wildlife program for you! Come in and sit yourself down. I’ll get you a hot chocolate - special treat for doing so well in the first phase of your mission.”
Mission? To be honest, I’d almost forgotten. I sit myself down in front of the TV and enjoy a hilarious half hour watching the mating habits of kangaroos. Dr Babbage looks at me with bemusement as I laugh so hard I almost stop breathing. It’s always been the same, this wildlife thing, ever since Benny first showed me his DVDs. Something about his unrestrained laughter as he watched squirrels gathering their nuts, or ferrets whizzing down into dark holes. It started me off. I’ve yet to see anything funnier than a good wildlife documentary.
After the program’s finished, I have a big cup of blue milk, rub balm all over my body (my usual bedtime routine) and grunt a goodnight to Dr Babbage. Inside my room, I make sure the door is firmly closed behind me, and I sit up in bed with my pad on my lap. The page is a blank yellow-white, lit only by the dull lamp in the corner of the room. What should I write for Ruby? The impulse to write the whole naked truth about myself is almost overwhelming, but of course I can’t; Stump and the Mannequin would find out, and my friend Benny would be the one to suffer. That wouldn't be fair. Instead, I write a kind of vague truth, given a splash of colour by the occasional lie. I write that my parents died in a car crash, that my uncle (he’s my uncle Babbage, not my granddad) looked after me and brought me up, and that the reason we came to London was that my uncle lost his research job in Alaska and moved over here to take up a post at a local University. Boring, or what?
It takes me ages to get to sleep. I keep thinking of my lovely walk with Ruby, and hoping that she might visit again, tomorrow night. And I think about the bag of fibs I’ve just written down for her reading pleasure. Handing it to her is going to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
Chapter 5 - Bodily Fluids
Wayne Smith has noticed that I go to the toilet a lot. I kept it to a minimum yesterday, feeling slightly embarrassed about it, but today - Thursday - I want to establish a proper routine. So here I am, for the fourth time, in a tiny cubicle in the boys’ toilets. I’ve applied my creams and I’m standing there, naked except for a new diaper, when Wayne crashes into the room. By the sound of it, he’s got one of his goons with him.
“How you doing in there, freakshow?” he shouts, banging several times on the cubicle door. Panicking, I pull on my pants and shirt, and begin to work frantically on the buttons. I could do without another incident like yesterday’s.
“Number one or number two?” barks Wayne, trying to peer under the gap at the bottom of the door. I catch a glimpse of his shaved head. His hair so short that I guess it must be a number one, but why the hell does he want me to comment on his haircut? His face disappears, and then I hear a scraping as he climbs up the cubicle, pushing his arm through the gap between the top of the door and the ceiling, trying to grab me. The cubicle walls wobble like they’re made of cardboard. I can hear Wayne's friend laughing and piddling in the cubicle next to mine. Wayne gives up on his climbing, and everything goes quiet for a few moments, except for a sinister whispering. The whispering stops and is followed by a splashing noise as a brief torrent of warm water rains down on me fr
om above, soaking my shirt. My first thought is that a pipe might have burst in the ceiling. But then I smell pee, and I know what’s happened.
“Next time, it’ll be a number two!” yells Wayne, accompanied by exaggerated laughter from his invisible companion. “And by the way, toilet boy,” he says when the laughter subsides, “I’ve told my Mum all about you and what you did yesterday. She wants you out of the school, and she’s sort of person that always gets what she wants.” He bangs on the door again, ridiculously loudly, and then he’s off.
Ruby’s waiting for me in the corridor. She shakes her head slowly as she studies the yellow stain on my shirt, and I notice that her hands are trembling slightly. “Sorry Bernie, I should have done something. I really should. But it’s a boys’ toilet, you know. I’m sorry. I’ll tell Mr Willets about this, honestly I will.”
I don’t know what she’s so upset about. It’s not her fault that Wayne Smith is a complete jerk, is it? His behaviour has nothing to do with her. I scribble down something to that effect in my notepad, and hand it to her as we walk towards our next lesson: art.
*
I’m about halfway through a disappointing sketch of an apple when the smiley receptionist comes into the room and asks for me.
“The school nurse would like to see you, Frank,” she whispers a little too loudly as we meander our way around the art tables towards the door, leaving behind a chorus of jeers and whistling in our wake. The receptionist leads me across the yard and, within minutes, I’m standing once more on the steps to the nurse’s hut, as if caught in a perpetually recurring nightmare.
The nurse greets me with the same disapproving tone as she did yesterday, but this time she’s not alone. There’s a man with her; a tall man in a black suit.
“Sit down there,” demands the nurse, directing me to the little bed by the wall. “This is Mr Bonnington - the head.” She places so much emphasis on those last two words that I find myself studying the shape of the man’s skull. Give or take the slightly prominent brow, I don’t see anything unusual enough to warrant such a strange nickname.
“Hello Frank,” says the head. His voice is clipped and formal, almost military. “I have authorised Mrs Smith to take a blood sample from your finger. Just a little prick, won’t take long.”
I give him my best ‘why?’ sort of expression.
“It’s routine, Frank. All new pupils at Cheasley High have one, in their first term.”
A sly sideways glance at Mrs Smith suggests that he might not be telling the whole truth. Then something dawns on me. Mrs Smith. No wonder the nurse seemed so familiar to me. If her hair were cropped short and her pendulous boobies were a little flatter, there’d be nothing in it. Wayne's taunts from this morning reverberate in my skull: I’ve told my Mum all about you, and she’s sort of person that always gets what she wants.
Mrs Smith clamps a plastic clip thing to the first finger of my right hand. She presses it and I hear a sharp click. I don’t feel a little prick. You know why. The nurse removes the clip, and then something quite unexpected happens: the man in the suit climbs onto the bed and sits next to me. He’s holding something in his left hand, behind his back. A pen, perhaps? Does he want me to write something?
“There,” the nurse says (more to the man than to me), “we’ll get that analysed as a priority. Now, Frank, roll up your sleeve.”
I groan and give her a quizzical look. “I need to take your blood pressure, Frank. Now roll up that sleeve, as high as it’ll go.”
I do as she says, and she attaches a kind of wrist band to my arm, with a tube coming out of it. A bit like the one Dr Babbage uses. I feel the band getting tighter as she begins to pump it up, and it’s as she’s doing this that she gives a little nod to the man sitting beside me, and I feel a slight pressure on my left shoulder, as if he just poked me with his pen. Several moments go by, and I watch dumbly as Mrs Smith jots down some readings, then removes the squeezing band from my arm.
“It’s as we thought!” exclaims the man in the suit, standing up to face me. He and Mrs Smith are both staring at my shoulder, so instinctively I do the same. And then I see it. A scalpel, sticking up from my shoulder, quivering like an arrow, its blade sunk deep into my skin.
What...? Why...? I grunt, feeling a sudden sense of clammy dread. The head pulls the scalpel out, and spins it round with his fingers, gazing at its glimmering form as if he can’t believe that what he’s seeing. “It’s brown,” he says to the nurse. “His blood is brown, like mud.” I look back at my shoulder. A tiny well of blood is already congealing at the spot where he stuck the scalpel in. And, yes, it is brown.
“That’ll be all, Frank,” says the man, standing up and opening the door at the front of the hut. “You can go back to your lesson now. And Frank, before you go home tonight, I want you to report to reception. The ladies there will give you a letter for you to take home to your grandfather. It’s very important, so don’t forget.”
The smiley receptionist is there, outside the hut; she’s been waiting for me all this time. Her smile drops slightly when she sees me. “Are you alright?” she asks, helping me pull my shirtsleeve down and button it at the wrist. “You’re looking very pale... I mean, even paler than usual.” Seeing the look of alarm on her face, I begin to fell slightly sick and confused.
I really don’t want the nice smiley receptionist to see me throw up, so I wait until she’s taken me across the yard and down several corridors, and I do it when I get back into the art room, hurling the contents of my stomach into a big sink in the corner.
The class love it.
*
It’s 5.00 PM and Dr Babbage is pacing up and down in the front room, holding the letter that I’ve just given him, muttering and cursing to himself.
“They have no right to do this,” he says. “Not without my consent. And a blood sample? Why wasn’t I told?”
I shake my head. I haven’t even seen the letter yet
“You might as well read it,” he says, thrusting the offending article into my hand. “Be quick, though.”
Dr Babbage walks to the conservatory and begins pottering and fussing over his growing collection of plants. Here’s what the letter says:
Dear Dr Babbage,
I am writing to you with regards to your grandson, Frank Wasdale. A routine medical examination, carried out today by our school nurse, revealed some surprising anomalies in Frank’s response to stimuli. Furthermore, his behaviour and medical problems have been causing concern amongst some of the teaching and support staff here. The school nurse is of the opinion that Frank may be carrying several undiagnosed diseases, and fears that some may be contagious. She has taken a blood sample, and we are awaiting the results, but I would recommend that in the meantime you make an appointment for Frank with your registered GP.
As a precaution, I have decided to place Frank on a temporary suspension from school activities, starting Friday 26th September. Frank will not be allowed to attend school functions or be present on the school grounds during his suspension. We will, of course, provide catch up work from each of his teachers, which will be e-mailed to you at the end of each day.
I trust that the situation will resolve itself soon, but you will understand that it is my duty to safeguard the health and wellbeing of the pupils at Cheasley High. Do contact me if you need to discuss the matter further.
Sincerely,
G. Bonnington, B.Ed.
Headteacher
Well, there it is, plain and clear: they’ve chucked me out of school, after just three days. My hair has caught fire, I've thrown up over the school nurse’s bullying son, and caused all kinds of chaos and confusion in my lessons. Perhaps they’re right; perhaps I am a threat to all the other children’s ‘health and wellbeing’. I feel saddened, though, because apart from my run-ins with Wayne and his idiot friends, I was beginning to enjoy school.
“This is disastrous,” says Dr Babbage, returning to the room and studying the letter once more, as if a re-re
ad might change its content. “You haven’t even been there a week! How could...?” He pauses, his expression gradually changing from one of surprise to anger. “Frank, as much as I hate to, I’m going to have to tell Stump about this. Right now.”
I try to pull him back by tugging at his jumper, but he wriggles free and storms out of the kitchen, leaving me alone with my big bowl of blue rice pudding. He’s gone for over ten minutes.
"He will be here at six," is all he can say when he finally returns. I sit there looking glum, listening half-heartedly to the birds in the back garden, and watching Dr Babbage wash the dishes and put the bins out, muttering under his breath all the while. Then, on the stroke of six, the doorbell rings.
Within seconds of Dr Babbage opening the door, Colonel Stump lifts me by the shirt and carries me into the front room, flinging me down onto the sofa as if I were an unwanted rag doll.
“You have a lot to answer for,” he snaps, pointing his bony finger right in my face. If this were a scene in a cartoon strip, steam would be shooting out of his ears.
The red-faced colonel turns his attention to Dr Babbage. “And don’t go thinking you’re unaccountable, Babbage. You’re just as responsible for this whole mess as this stupid kid is.” Stump’s fist comes flicking towards me like a flying fish out of the air, striking me square on the nose. I feel something snap, and the warm sensation of snot and blood filling my nostrils.
“There’s no need for that,” protests Dr Babbage and he gets one in the face too for his troubles. He sinks to the carpeted floor, his lip spurting. I rummage around for some old tissues in my pocket, and hand a bunch to him.
“You’re both too damned soft!” shouts the Colonel. “After all I’ve done for you, to prepare you for a mission like this, you’re still as soft as cheese. Hell, you make me sick.” He gives Dr Babbage a kick in the belly, as if to prove his assertion. Part of me wants to launch myself at Stump, to hit him back, show him what a coward he is. But I keep thinking of what might happen to Benny.
Frank Wasdale- First Mission Page 5
