Doctor Who_ Time and Relative - Kim Newman [18]
One of the others on DT today was Joe Gibson, whose Dad is a shop steward. He said Detention is a way of saving Coal Hill money on proper handymen. He was a DT veteran, mostly for talking back and questioning School Rules – John once called him 'a typical barrackroom lawyer'.
The DT crew was five boys – all from Year Four and Five, mostly for ill-timed, after-twelve-noon April Fool jokes – and Gillian and me, under the supervision of Ape Okehurst. We had to report to the Assembly Hall when all the other pupils were leaving for their buses or walking home, and be given our tasks and equipment.
'I hear you put that Neanderthal Minto in hospital,' said Gibson. 'Well done, ladies. Someone had to teach that porky git a lesson.'
Gillian wasn't talking to me.
She was thinking a lot. About what I'd nearly said to the Head. That was more important to her than the snowman.
I couldn't help but think of the snowman, though it made my head hurt.
It wasn't anything to do with my usual fog-patches, but it was in a related area. Unexplained phenomena are short-cuts into the fog. Whenever John wants to talk about flying saucers buzzing the RAF or Stonehenge being an ancient spaceport, I get an instant migraine as my brain warns me not to join in.
The snowman came alive.
The presence wasn't just in Totter's Lane. It was here, too. And it was getting frisky. Showing itself. Flexing icy muscles. Mr Okehurst had us put on our coats, scarves and gloves and took us to the equipment shed and issued heavy-duty gear. Picks and shovels. Blowtorches. Ladders. After consideration, he even doled out oilskin slickers to wear over our coats. DT regulars groaned, sensing an unpleasant chore in the offing.
The job today was to attack the ice. The build-up was so heavy that there was a risk the gutters would be ripped off the walls. Mr Okehurst didn't quite know what to do with Gillian and me, assuming (wrongly!) that we'd be useless with picks and shovels. In the end, he decided we were light enough to go up ladders and use torches on thick ice-patches.
'And Hatcher doesn't hold the ladder,' he ordered.
Dudley Hatcher, a spotty Year Five boy, was on DT for looking up girls' skirts. His nickname was 'Dirty Gertie'.
We trooped out to the gloomy playground. By the time our two hours was up, it'd be night and the freeze would be on.
I kept away from the snowman. A scraped trail in the snow marked where it had moved. It was bigger than it had been, as if children had added to its bulk with padded-on snowballs. Barbed ice branches sprouted from its sides. A beard of icicle tusks fringed its head. It seemed less like a snowman, despite its cap and scarf, than some species of dangerous tree.
The boys held the ladders against a wall and Ape pointed up.
Where gutters met over a pipe there was a clump of ice. It was a blooming mass, a dirty white jellyfish trailing thick streamers down the pipe and along buckled gutters.
'Looks like a ton of frozen tripe,' said Gibson.
'Up there and at it, girls,' ordered Mr Okehurst. 'You lads be ready to smash and shovel the lumps that fall. Gertie, you're on wheelbarrow duty.'
On DT, teachers can call kids what they like.
I was worried for a moment that Gillian would take her torch to me when we were up there, but I knew her anger wouldn't last. Not with me. She wouldn't forget, but she was sensible about it. She had got over Saturday night at the Pump; she would get over this afternoon in the Head's office.
We climbed up the ladders.
'Race you,' she said, speaking to me again.
She scrambled ahead and won. I chose to be careful. The boys down below made comments but looked anywhere but up our skirts.
(Mr Carker has turned down dozens of petitions that girls be allowed to wear trousers to School. I think he'd be happiest if we had to wear Mohammedan veils and Idaho potato-sacks.)
At the top, up near the roof, we perched and aimed flame at the ice.
I was glad of the blowtorch, which