Loudmouth Louis - Anne Fine [5]
She handed the form back, and away she went.
Next stop, Mr Hambleton.
“Sponsor me, please, for shutting up?”
“Shutting up?” The same light gleamed in his eyes as in Miss Sparkes’.
“What? All through Percussion Band?”
“I would,” I said. “Except that Percussion Band isn’t till next Monday, and I’m doing this Friday.”
“I’ll get the timetable changed,” he cried. “I’ll go after Mrs Heap right now, and make her do it. This is an opportunity not to be missed!”
He snatched the form, and scribbled on it madly.
“A whole Percussion Band practice without you talking! Oh, it’s too good to be true! I can hardly wait! Roll on, Friday! And I’ll tape-record it, so I know how it sounds, and can listen to it over and over in all my darkest hours. Oh, wonderful! Amazing! I never thought I’d see the day!” He spun me around in the corridor. “Oh, what joy!”
I had a sudden moment of doubt. Maybe he wouldn’t hear it. Maybe I couldn’t do it.
“No!” I told myself sternly. “Don’t even think about failure. Like Leighton Buzzard Wanderers, it’s onwards and upwards!”
And I strolled off, whistling.
When I got home, I added up.
“If I do a quarter past eight till a quarter past three, that will be seven hours.”
Mum checked my working.
“And if everyone pays me everything they’ve promised, I’ll have ten million –’
“Let’s leave the dinner ladies out of this,” said Mum. “Just for the moment.”
“All right then.” I added up without them. “Now I’ll multiply by seven.”
Mum checked my working again.
And there it was. The answer.
“That’s amazing. With that much, Mrs Heap could buy a whole new floor-to-ceiling bookcase and Jill it with books. Couldn’t she?”
Mum tapped her pencil on her teeth.
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “If you can manage seven whole hours …”
8 Fresh Start, Fresh Colours
WHEN FRIDAY CAME, like Leighton Buzzard Wanderers when they made their fresh start, I wore fresh colours. Gran found me a bright yellow shirt to remind me that Silence is Golden. And round the cuffs she embroidered “Sssssssh! Sssssssh!” in little letters so thick and black they looked just like stripes.
“They’re to remind you, too.”
And then I got the pep talk.
“Listen!” said Mum.
“I am listening.”
“No,” Mum explained. “That is our strategy for the day. For you to listen.”
“Listen?”
“Yes,” Mum said. “It’s a defensive tack. You see, if you’re busy listening, then you won’t get bored and start talking. And you’ll find out what goes on when you’re not interrupting all the time. It’ll be interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “Think about it. You’ll be like a fly on the wall, and get to see what things are like without you.”
The more I thought about it, the stranger it sounded.
“Fly on the wall?”
“That’s right.”
“Weird!”
Mum put her finger on her lips. “Remember, if you talk, then it won’t work. Things will just go back to being how they are usually.”
“Like when Leighton Buzzard Wanderers ended up back in the fourth division?”
“That’s right. Like that.”
“Right,” I said. “Match tactic. Fly on the wall. Not talking. Listening.”
“That’s the spirit,” Mum told me. She made the Leighton Buzzard Wanderers Victory Salute. “Now go out there, Louis, and win, win, win.”
9 Interesting…
FIRST STOP, THE lollipop crossing. As I walked closer, Mrs Frier was reaching out to pull Bernie Henderson back from the kerb, as usual. On any other morning I would have begun to chat to her about something. But instead I lagged behind, in case she’d forgotten it was a special day, and asked if the cat had got my tongue.
So she had time, for once, to speak to Bernie.
“Young man, you practically hurl yourself off that kerb every morning. Did you know that, for every girl your age who has a road accident, seven boys get run over?”
“Seven?”
Bernie looked really shocked, and stepped right back.
“That’s right,” said Mrs Frier. “And doesn’t that show that charging off the kerb isn’t a smart idea?”
She stepped out in the next gap to stop all the traffic. And this time Bernie waited until she gave him