by Hilary McKay
The guinea pig, looking dreadfully bored, scratched an ear with a back leg in a desperate kind of way.
‘I wouldn’t have had to put the snow in the fridge (which was Max’s idea, only he said freezer) if anyone had told me it was snowing and got me up in time to make a snowman. But they didn’t. Dad didn’t. Mum didn’t. Not even Max!
‘Not even Max,’ repeated Charlie, picking out a few more guinea pig cornflakes. ‘I hope guinea pig food is not poisonous to humans.’
The guinea pig turned and went to bed as if he did not want to discuss the subject.
Charlie waited a while, but he didn’t come out again.
Then Charlie went and sat with his head in his arms until the teacher came back with the class.
She had snow in her hair and she was not in a good temper. She took no notice of Charlie until she had told Henry and several other people what she thought was the difference between a joke and just plain rudeness. Then she asked, ‘Is everything all right, Charlie?’ as if she was not expecting to hear any good news.
‘Is guinea pig food poisonous to humans?’ asked Charlie. ‘I ate some.’
‘Charlie!’ exclaimed the teacher. ‘Are you telling me that I can’t leave you alone in the classroom for five minutes without you eating the guinea pig food?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie.
‘How much did you eat?’ demanded the teacher.
‘An awful lot,’ said Charlie.
‘Well, I don’t suppose it will hurt you,’ said his teacher. ‘What did you manage to find out about the Romans while I was away?’
‘I’ve got tummy ache,’ said Charlie.
‘Charlie!’
‘And I think I feel sick,’ said Charlie.
4
The Man with the Tool Bag’s Fault
If there was one thing Charlie’s teacher could not bear it was children being sick in class. So Charlie had to go and lie down on the plastic sofa in the little room that opened out of the secretary’s office. They gave him a blanket and a bucket and the secretary said, ‘I’ll leave the door open. Call me if you need to but I expect I’ll know.’
Charlie lay down on the sofa and he listened to the humming sound that came from the warm classrooms full of children working, and he watched the snow falling outside the window. After a while a man came in with a tool bag, and when he saw Charlie he said, ‘Hello, mate!’
‘Hello,’ said Charlie.
‘You in trouble, mate?’ asked the man.
‘I’ve got to lie here with this bucket in case I’m sick,’ said Charlie.
The man stepped away a little and looked back through the door at the secretary.
‘It’s nothing catching!’ she called. ‘He ate the guinea pig food!’
‘You never did!’ said the man to Charlie.
‘Yes I did,’ said Charlie, and while the man opened his tool bag and began working on the red box that contained the fire alarm which he had come to mend, he proceeded to tell him the story of how he came to end up on the sofa with the blanket and the bucket. And by the time Charlie had finished, the fire alarm was fixed and the man began repacking his tools again.
‘I’ve never heard anything like it!’ he said to Charlie, when he had heard the whole story. ‘But if you ask me, you should never have eaten that guinea pig food! You should have waited.’
‘Till what?’
‘Dinner,’ said the man, getting up and rubbing his knees. ‘Now then, I’m finished here! Don’t you go pushing that little red button I’ve just fixed or you’ll have all your class and the teachers and the secretary and I don’t know who else out in the snow turning a lovely shade of blue. And I hope you’re feeling better soon, mate!’
Then he left.
Afterwards, when Charlie repeated what the man had said, he missed out one word. Which was Don’t. Charlie said he had not heard the man say Don’t. But he had heard all the rest. And lying on the sofa, getting more and more bored, he decided that what the man had wanted was for him, Charlie, to test the fire alarm and see if it was working.
When Charlie had worked this out he did nothing for a while until he heard the secretary get up to take a message to one of the classrooms. Then he got up, crossed the room, opened the fire alarm box with the tiny catch at the side, pressed the red button, shut the box, and lay quickly down on the sofa with his eyes shut and the blanket over his head.
Everything went exactly as the man had said it would. The whole school, including Charlie, had to leave the warm classrooms, and hurry out into the snow. There they had to stand in lines while teachers called registers and counted heads and said things like: No of course the school is not on fire! Someone has been very foolish, that is all!
And: Charlie, if I see you picking up snow again you will have no playtime for a week!
And: The sooner we get this done the sooner we can go back inside!
And: One more silly question and I shall go mad!
5
The Big Boys’ Fault
It was no time at all before Charlie was blamed for setting off the fire alarm. The secretary and Charlie’s teacher found out right away. They were very cross about it. They did not believe for one moment that the man who had fixed the fire alarm had wanted Charlie to test that it was working. The bell for lunch rang, and Charlie was still being told off, and when he interrupted and asked, ‘What about dinner?’ they both said, ‘I thought you felt sick!’
Charlie explained that the fresh air had made him better. Neither of them seemed particularly pleased about this good news, and they sent Charlie into dinner last in the whole school.
Being last into dinner was a very bad thing. By the time Charlie got to the serving hatch all the chicken shapes, baked beans, chips, iced buns, pink custard and milkshakes had disappeared and there was nothing left but horrible healthy baked potatoes, salad and yoghurt.
All Charlie’s friends had finished eating and gone out long ago. Charlie had to sit down with his tray at a table full of big boys he did not know.
The big boys did not usually bother with anyone from Charlie’s class, but today, because of the fire alarm, they were very friendly to Charlie. They paused their gobbling of iced buns and pink custard to say, ‘Nice one, Charlie!’ and other cheering things like that. They said it was bad luck for poor Charlie having only salad and yoghurt to eat, and they offered him dips in their pink custard. They had nearly finished their lunches, but before they left they kindly showed Charlie how to ding his knife on the edge of the table and flick slices of cucumber high into the air when the dinner ladies were not looking. Then they said, ‘See you later, Charlie!’ and went away, leaving Charlie all alone.
He had run out of cucumber by this time, so he flicked his baked potato instead. It landed with a horrible splatter, and before he knew it Charlie was back in the office again, this time with the Head of the whole school. She asked, ‘Can you possibly explain what is happening to you today, Charlie?’
Charlie explained that he had flicked the baked potato because he had no more of the cucumber that the big boys had taught him how to ding into the air. And he explained that he would never have had cucumber and baked potatoes to ding into the air if he had not been last of the whole school into dinner.
And the reason he was last of the whole school into dinner was because he had been kept behind to talk about the fire alarm.
Which he had set off to help the man with the tool bag.
Who he had met when resting on the plastic sofa with the bucket and blanket in the room by the secretary’s office because he felt sick.
From eating guinea pig food instead of working on his totally boring Roman homework.
Which his class teacher would never have noticed he had not done if his mother had not brought him late to school and told how it had been left behind, along with his school bag and his packed lunch, because the morning had been such an awful rush.
Because of Charlie having to have an unexpected hot bath and then wait w
hile all the snow he had put into the fridge was unpacked and thrown away.
He had put the snow in the fridge, he explained, to keep it safe until after school when Max was going to help him make a snowman.
Because there was no time in the morning to do it properly, because no one had woken him up, not his father or mother or even Max.
The Head Teacher said to Charlie that she had never heard such a load of rubbish in her life.
Charlie did not get into any more trouble at school that day. He could not. He spent the afternoon in the Head’s office, right under her nose, doing nothing. He felt ill and weak with boredom.
But just before afternoon break she left him for a moment, and Charlie jumped up and hunted desperately on her desk for something to meddle with. The only thing he could find was her hole-punch, and he had just accidentally pulled the cover off the bottom and spilt about ten million tiny multicoloured circles of paper all over her carpet when she came back in.
The Head made him pick every single one of them up, and while he was doing it she telephoned Charlie’s mother with a list of his crimes for the day. She did not miss any of them out. Charlie could hear the squawks of his mother on the other end of the phone at each new crime.
Then he heard the Head say to his mother, ‘I think it would be better for everyone if you came and took Charlie home.’
6
Everyone’s Fault Except Charlie’s
Charlie was sent home from school. Max had never been sent home from school. Charlie’s mother had never been sent home from school. Neither, she told Charlie, had Charlie’s father. Nor had any of Charlie’s ancestors, none of them. Charlie’s mother was sure about that.
But Charlie was sent home from school.
The Head told Charlie’s mother that she wondered if Charlie might be ill, and that she was just sending him home because she thought he might be happier there. Charlie’s mother was not fooled by these kind words. Just before the Head telephoned, she had come home from work to find the freezer door had been open all morning. During that time Charlie’s bulging bags of snow had turned into several dripping icicles and a small lake that had spread halfway across the kitchen floor.
Charlie’s mother said, as she bundled Charlie out of office, ‘You don’t look ill to me! Just plain naughty!’ All the way along the corridor she told him about his ancestors and relations and especially Max never being sent home from school. In the cloakroom she told him about the icicles in the freezer and the lake on the kitchen floor.
‘I hope my snow’s all right,’ said Charlie, seriously worried for the first time that day. ‘Is it?’
‘NO!’ said his mother, very, very crossly.
Then they reached the door that led outside, and all in one moment Charlie forgot about the snow in the freezer. He stared and stared. He could hardly believe his good luck. A wonderful amount had fallen since lunch time. He guessed that the garden must be covered again, deeper than ever. And he was out of school early. There would be hours and hours to play in it. He said, ‘I’m going to make the best snowman ever!’
‘Charlie,’ said his mother in a calm, quiet, terrible voice, ‘If you are not well enough to be at school you are not well enough to play in the snow.’
‘But I am well!’ cried Charlie. ‘You said yourself I didn’t look ill! They didn’t send me home because I was ill! They sent me because I was bad!’
‘Well,’ said Charlie’s mother, even more calmly and quietly and terribly, ‘if you are too badly behaved to be at school you are certainly too badly behaved to play in the snow! Bed.’
‘What?’
‘Bed,’ said Charlie’s mother.
Charlie argued, but it made no difference. He tried to explain how it was not his fault he had been so bad. He began his long story about the big boys and the tool-bag man and all the other people who had managed to get him into trouble that day, but she would not listen. Then he tried roaring and crying and kicking things, and that did not work either. He was up in his bedroom, staring sulkily out of the window, when Max got home from school.
Max said, ‘What are you doing up here? I thought you’d be out in the snow!’
Charlie hadn’t known how mad he was with Max until Max said that. Good Max, who had never been sent home from school. Clever Max, who always did everything well. Horrible Max, who had given him an illness on the only day he had ever had enough snow for a snowman. Rotten, awful Max who had left him to sleep when it was snowy outside. Max, the worst brother in the world.
Charlie shouted at Max, ‘You are the worst brother in the world! And it’s all your fault that I’m stuck up here!’
‘Why?’ asked Max.
‘Because,’ said Charlie, blubbering hot tears and pushing Max and snuffling and hiccuping, ‘you didn’t wake me up in time to make a snowman. And then you said put the snow in the freezer and you’d help me later. And I did and Mum was mad and I was late for school and she told my teacher I’d forgotten my homework and they kept me in at break time and I had to eat the guinea pig food because I never had any breakfast and it made me feel sick so I had to go and lie down and then a man showed me how to test the fire alarm and I tested it and everyone had to go outside and they found out it was me and told me off for so long that I had to have horrible salad and baked potatoes with the big boys and they showed me how to ding my cucumber and I dinged my baked potato and it splattered all over and they sent me to the Head’s office and she rang up Mum and said to take me home! And the snow in the freezer melted and flooded the kitchen! And whose fault is all that? Yours!’ shouted Charlie.
‘Yep,’ said Max.
Charlie stood stock still and silent, as if he had suddenly been frozen into a snowman himself. He could hardly believe his ears.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Max.
That made Charlie start crying again, and he said, through his tears, ‘You said you’d help me make a snowman properly.’
‘I will,’ said Max.
7
Max’s Fault (II)
Max always did the things he said he would do, and now he helped Charlie to make a snowman while stuck in his bedroom for outrageous behaviour. He could have begged their mother to let Charlie out. She might have said Yes, but then again she might have said No. Max did not like to make plans that depended on other people saying Yes or No.
He might have smuggled Charlie down into the garden and made a snowman there, somewhere out of sight, but that would have been sneaky. Max never did things the sneaky way. He did them properly.
Max went downstairs and checked on their mother. She was in the living room, mending the curtain. She said, ‘Don’t go into the kitchen until the floor dries, please, Max.’
‘I won’t,’ said Max.
Then he went back upstairs and opened Charlie’s bedroom window wide open and he got their mother’s mop bucket and he tied a long rope to it, made out of everyone’s dressing-gown cords.
‘Now, Charlie!’ said Max, as he lowered the bucket out of the bedroom window, ‘all you have to do is pull!’ And then he was gone.
Down in the garden Max filled the bucket with snow, and Charlie pulled it up.
And emptied it on the bedroom mat.
Over and over again.
And when they had an enormous heap of snow up in Charlie’s bedroom, Max came back upstairs again and they made it into a snowman. A real, perfect snowman, with a hat and scarf and the kitchen mop for a broom.
It was so good that when it was finished Charlie could not bear not to show it to anyone. So he fetched his mother and she said, ‘Good heavens! Good grief! What have you done? Look at the floor! Snow all over! Look at that mat! Soaked! What a day! Max! I know who to blame for this! Charlie never would have dreamed of such a thing! Never!’
While she was shouting, Max got his camera and took a photograph of Charlie standing on the bedroom mat with his arm round his snowman.
Charlie’s smile was even bigger than the snowman’s.
�
�What an awful day!’ moaned Max and Charlie’s mother.
Charlie was thinking, What a lovely day! I ate all that guinea pig food without being sick! I set off the fire alarm and got them all out in the snow! And then I got out of school early and Max and me made the best snowman in the world!
He looked at Max, who was now pointing the camera at their indignant mother, and he thought that Max was not such a bad brother after all.
1
Going
Charlie had a very sad hard life. He had a terrible family who did not appreciate him.
Charlie was seven years old and he lived with his brother Max, who was eleven years old, and his father and mother, who were ancient.
‘They like Max best,’ Charlie told his best friend Henry.
It was a sunny afternoon in the summer holidays. Charlie was spending it in Henry’s garden, which was just down the road from his own. He was having a good grumble.
‘They like Max much better than me! They laugh at his jokes …’
‘Don’t they laugh at yours?’
‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘They say stuff like, “Charlie, that is not the sort of thing anyone wants to hear about at the dinner table”. And they hate my mouth-organ playing. My dad shouts, “Somewhere else, please Charlie!” the second I begin.’
‘My mum asks me to play my recorder,’ remarked Henry smugly.
