Читать книгу Zero Per Cent - Mark Swallow - Страница 14

On the agreed day Sal came to collect me from Maths before break. We were carrying my tray of wares downstairs when the Head met us.

“Feed ‘em up, Jack,” he said, chivvying off.

The buzzer had still not gone by the time Sal squeezed my shoulder and I moved Beyond The Door.

There, straight away, was Ms Grundle, all mouth, opening and closing like an old cod as she prepared her tray at the far end of the room.

Hungry teachers shoved through The Door and formed a slavering queue in front of Ms Grundle whose own mouth now simpered moist greetings as she poured the tea.

I was too fascinated by this secret world to feel ignored. I can report that Beyond The Door there is laughter, joking, cussing even; the grumpy ones remain grumpy even there, the whingers whinge and the good ones are good in there too. It is, fundamentally, a human environment.

I had a view of the notice board: Mrs Carew’s pretty ‘Thank you’ notelet to staff (‘for the really special CD rack’); Nadir Sharma had had a knock on the head and would probably have ‘trouble with even the simplest instructions’; a little poster for a staff stress-busting volleyball game on Friday next to celebrate ‘making it this far through the term’. I saw another teacher staring at what I realised was a large bank of form photos. He suddenly yelped with joy having matched a picture to a class list.

“Gotcha! I’ll teach you to give me a fake name, you pathetic waste of space.”

These photographs, I happened to know, were also for handing to the newspapers when we got murdered.

Meanwhile all the teachers fell on Ms Grundle’s stodge and minced it up in their chattering gobs with great gulps of her stewed tea. I didn’t notice at first but Finch was trying to open my trading. I sold him a drop scone but he was never going to start a consumer trend. Sal’s entrance and noisy enjoyment of my carrot cake, however, did the trick. Those at the back of Ms Grundle’s queue came over immediately and the sudden surge of latecomers meant I was soon sold out with about nine quid in my pocket.

The staff herded out with the buzzer, followed soon after by Ms Grundle who ran her trolley over my foot.

“The door,” she said, without looking up from her crumby plates and greasy doilies.

“Allow me!”

In the canteen at lunch the dinner ladies had clearly been told to spatter me. I stared one of them in the eye to show I knew whose orders she was obeying.

“It shows how frightened she is already,” said Sal when the three of us met later for banking. “How do you think her Ladyship’s going to react to these tomorrow?” She pulled a tray of beautiful sausage rolls from an oven.

“But…”

“We’ll pass them off as yours,” she laughed.

“Excellent,” said Finch. “And this is for raising brand awareness…” He presented me with a word-processed sign to hang around my neck.

CURLING’S CAKES A BUSINESS STUDIES AND CULINARY STUDIES JOINT VENTURE

“I had it laminated,” he added. “Wipeclean – in case the marketplace gets nasty.”

Unfortunately Mrs Carew was not quite secure enough in herself to buy from me but almost everyone else did over the next few breaks. Ms Grundle’s rage was not the only thing to grow: Finch plotted a sales graph which looked like a cheerful erection, my share of the profit clearing £70. Another mention in the Times Ed and the Head was all over his ‘joint venturers’.

Events moved fast. They do in business. Finch made a plan for heavy finger food at the next parents’ evening. Sal was expanding the frontiers of canape science and each day my wares grew more exotic: strips of rarebit, the mini-pizzas, angels on horseback negotiating perfect fairy toast jumps. Since she no longer required my cooking skills, I had more time for informal seminars with insatiable mates on life Beyond The Door.

Then, just as suddenly, came Lady Disgruntle’s response. She dug out her grease-spattered union membership, made a few urgent calls and was able to dangle the threat of action in front of Bumcheeks who promptly buckled and terminated the project. The thought of her leading her dinner ladies from the canteen to his office was too much.

We wound the business up but, two days later, I literally tripped over the means to our revenge. I saw my old mate Nobbi, the greengrocer, raise his hands just as my foot squished a rotten avocado. I skidded and fell sideways into a pile of fruit boxes, part filled with other dying fruits. Nobbi cackled as he pulled me up out of it.

“Scholars! You want to take your head out the clouds, mate!”

His stall had always struck me as magnificent and at Primary I must have painted more greengrocers than aeroplanes. But now I was staring at it with new fascination, particularly at a plump and weighty fruit I’d never seen before.

“What are these, Nobbi?”

“Canadian cherries – and there’s a bastard blackbird sits on the gutter over there and knows just how much they cost. He swoops at ‘em…”

“Not the cherries. These.”

“Mangoes, Jack. Never seen them before? Jet-fresh, these, from Mother India.”

He whipped out a knife, slit it down the middle and rapidly criss-crossed the flesh. The first brilliant cube made me grin. This was up there with caviar. I wanted more, now.

“Go man, go!” Nob removed the flat stone and prepared the other half.

“How much are they?”

“To you, 40p. You wouldn’t get a can and a frigging choccy bar from him next door for that, Jack.”

I subtracted four tens from my dinner money. He grabbed a handful of cherries and stuffed them in with my mango, swinging the paper bag round and round till it had mouse ears.

“Prefer you to have them than that bleeder.” He stuffed the treasures deep into my bag and we stared at the beady bird who got embarrassed and crossed to a distant satellite dish.

My love affair with fresh produce had begun and I quickly established myself as the first and most significant fruit-and-vegetarian in the history of Chevy Oak School.

By the end of the week I had an arrangement with Nobbi. I helped him set up for an hour each morning in exchange for as much produce as I could carry. It beat the paper round and provisioned me for a day of steady consumption at school.

“What’s that you got there, Jack?”

At first they took the piss.

“Apple of course.”

“A apple? What for?” They’d proudly show their tongues cradling sweets and yank their digits to spurt their cans. But long after they’d finished the day’s quota, when their gum too was unbearably tasteless, there was I still eating! With their pretty chocolate bars a sticky memory, the fizzy drinks an ugly fur on their tongues, I simply plucked out another brown bag. Radishes, Antiguan tangerines, Frisbee mushrooms and Congolese bananas. I wasn’t darkening Ms Grundle’s canteen doors – and I felt great.