Loudmouth Louis - Anne Fine [9]
Not even for someone so quiet they heard every whisper. “Louis, quick! No one’s marking me. Throw the ball this way!”
So quiet, they heard Wayne say, “This is brilliant! Today Louis is gaining us more points than he’s losing from talking, so our team’s going to win.”
So quiet that, when the bell rang, they heard Miss Hunter promise: “If you’re all this good next week, we’ll have the ropes out. That’s a promise.”
Back in the classroom, before going-home time, we did a bit more work, but then Miss Sparkes stopped us early. “See this?” she said, rooting in her bag. “Usually by now, I’m looking For aspirins, but today I’m digging for my peppermints.”
Everyone got one. Not just me.
“Don’t say ‘thank you’,'’ she warned me. “Just keep on going till a quarter past three, and that will make seven whole hours.”
I could hardly believe it.
They clapped me out, like Leighton Buzzard Wanderers the day they went up in the League.
Dora and Roberta and Amelia all curtsied to me beautifully as I walked by.
The dinner ladies banged their saucepan lids as I went past the kitchens.
Mrs Heap was standing on the steps, browsing through library-plaque catalogues. “We must do this again very soon,” she said to me hopefully.
At the kerb, Bernie Henderson stood well back while Mrs Frier stopped the traffic. She raised her lollipop sign in a salute as I walked past.
Mrs Havergill handed a rose to me over the garden wall as I walked up the path. “You might think of keeping going through the weekend,” she suggested.
And Gran was waiting at the door.
“Well,” she said. “That golden yellow hasn’t stood up very well to a long day in school. It looks quite grubby. I think I’m going to have to whip it off you, and put it in the wash, and –”
I wasn’t even listening. I was counting the second hand round to the end of the very last minute. (I could have done it with my eyes closed, but it was important to be sure.)
Three. Two. One.
YES!!!
And then I spoke.
“I did it! It was brilliant! I had a great day! It was wonderful. I got to play the chiming bells, and I understood borrowing properly, and we read a ghost story all the way through, and I saw an amazing film about potties, and –”
The phone rang. It was Mum.
“How did it go?”
“Amazing! I saved Bernie Henderson’s life, and fixed things so that Roberta got a part in her dancing show, and we sang my favourite song in Assembly, and I learned to count to a minute without a watch, and –”
The door flew open. It was Dad, home early from school.
“How did it go?”
“Superb! I found out that next year we get to go to Alton Towers, and lunch was the best ever, and our team won the ball game, and Miss Sparkes gave me a peppermint, and I’ve made millions for the new library. Millions.”
Dad looked a bit wistful. “We need a new library too,” he said. “You wouldn’t think of coming over to be quiet at our school?”
“No,” I said. “No, I wouldn’t. But I did think I might spend a bit more time being quiet in my own.”
10 Fly on the Wall
AND SO I have. Not terribly quiet, and not all the time. But just enough.
Everyone’s happier. They all paid up (except for the dinner ladies, who tried to pretend that their noughts were just fancy decoration. But, to make up, they have lent Mr Hambleton a bit of serving counter for tapes of The Percussion Band Medley. And sales of that are going really well, so we’ll probably get to ten million without them.)
And the new library’s open. People still go round boasting about how they raised money for it. How they washed cars, or made biscuits, or had wet sponges thrown at them, or sold raffle tickets. Even Miss Sparkes is still bragging about making five whole pounds by auctioning the timer that never worked on me.
“What made you change, anyway?” she keeps on asking.
But I won’t say. I won’t give any clues. (”That’s the spirit!” says Mum. “Be like Leighton Buzzard Wanderers and keep your secrets.”) But sometimes, just sometimes, I see Miss Sparkes watching me grinning at some fly on the wall, and I wonder if she guesses.
Nobody calls me Mr Loudmouth