Doctor Who_ Time and Relative - Kim Newman [2]
Grandfather got hold of an Eleven Plus exam paper and made me sit it. I failed, by trying to argue with the stupid questions. Because of that, he put me in a Secondary Modem School rather than send me to a Grammar – which means mixed boys and girls (socially healthy, I suppose, though there are drawbacks – like F.M.), being called by your first name (unless you're being shouted at), no uniforms (though there is a prehistoric dress code – no trousers for girls) and one everything-lumped-in Science course (rather than separate classes for Chemistry, Physics and Biology). We're all expected to leave at sixteen and get jobs. Most of us can't wait.
I can be so stupid sometimes. School!!! What a pointless, miserable idea! It's Absurd (my Word of the Week). I don't see Grandfather going out and getting a job on the buses or as a solicitors' clerk to go unnoticed among 'the indigenous population'. Perhaps he just wants me out of his long white hair in the daytimes. It's not as if School could actually teach
me anything.
Yesterday, in Science, we spent forty minutes establishing that magnesium burns. A revelation that rocks established beliefs about the nature of the universe to the core. I was tempted to strike one of Grandfather's everlasting matches, and see what poor plodding Mr Chesterton made of that.
I especially hate Mr Grange. 'Ghastly' Grange. He is our form master, which means he has us in his total power first thing in the morning and afternoon as he calls out the register. I'm in Form 4G; 4 for the year, G for Grange. He runs down the names and puts attendance ticks in the register, as if hoping each night or lunch-break will reveal heavy casualties so he can draw a thick black line through the name of the departed. He has hair growing out of his ears and teaches my least favourite lesson, Geography. Whenever I use an out-of-date place-name or get a capital city wrong, he chants a line from a horrible song, encouraging the others in class to sing along – 'it's Istanbul, not Constantinople'!
From the first time I sat in his classroom (at the back), Ghastly Grange disliked me. I don't know why and I'm not especially interested, but I just put his back up. Because I joined School after term started, he has me classed as a latecomer and I've never managed to catch up. He objects to inkiness on principle. And he either doesn't like girls at all or likes them too much in a way that would Get Him Into Trouble.
Today, I forgot myself and Got Into Trouble.
Not like that! Ugh, gack and yuck, no! Never like that!
There was another thick fall of fresh snow last night, which settled over the frozen slush that's been around for weeks. In dinner break, we built a snowman in the playground. Gillian Roberts noticed a gaggle of Year One kids doing a bad job of snowman-construction and rounded up John the Martian and me to pitch in. Gillian sits next to me at the back of the class and is clever in ways School isn't set up to recognise. Give her Maths homework and she makes a hash of it, because to her logarithms are just nonsense numbers in books. And she always falls down in English because she has a mental block about spelling even the simplest words. However, if Gillian gets interested in a complicated, short-term project, she can organise the whole thing on the spot, handing out work assignments to the most qualified, inspiring others to do their best.
When the snowman had risen taller than John, the tallest of us, Gillian hoisted up a Year One girl called Sadie Lederer, smallest of the group, and let her make the face. She stuck on black pebbles, for a nose and eyes. After she'd put Sadie down, Gillian fixed tiny clusters of twigs to the sides of the football-sized head.
'Look, Forehead,' Gillian said to me, 'he has hair growing out of his ears. Just like Ghastly Grange.'
We all chortled. Even the littler