Читать книгу Dragon's Green - Scarlett Thomas - Страница 11

5

Mrs Beathag Hide disliked many things – disobedience, excuses, weakness, children – but the thing she loved more than anything else was literature. She loved poems and plays and novels and long epics. Her eyesight was not what it had once been, though, and so she took any chance to have people read things to her. Even if those people were children, and abominably bad at reading, it was better than nothing.

And so the only good thing that ever happened in Mrs Beathag Hide’s classes – now that there was no more creative writing – were the play readings. Each pupil was given a part, and then the whole class would read through a play, which sometimes took several double periods and did not, somehow, feel like work.

The Bottom of the Class got no part, or the very smallest part in the play, which suited Maximilian. Whoever was Top of the Class got the main part and was allowed to choose who played the other parts. This did not suit Lexy. She did not like main parts. Whenever she read a book, she decided in advance which character she was going to identify with most (in her mind, the character she was going to be), but this was never the main character. Sometimes it was the main character’s little sister or best friend. Often it was someone helpful, like a nurse. Sometimes she chose wrong and the character died or only made one appearance in the whole book. But even that was better than having to be the star.

Now Lexy was reading the main female part in Antigone, which was a Greek tragedy. The children all had to practise saying it before they could even start reading it. You couldn’t say it the way it looked, for a start.

‘AN-tee-gone-knee,’ tried the children, after about ten minutes of tuition, almost getting it right.

‘NO!’ said Mrs Beathag Hide.

‘An-TI-gun-knee,’ they tried again.

‘GOOD!’

And then the play reading began.

Antigone was exactly the kind of main character Lexy did not want to be. In the play, Antigone’s brother dies in a battle against her other brother, and Antigone wants to bury him but isn’t allowed to. Then she gets condemned to death. The play was very sad – tragic, according to Mrs Beathag Hide, which is something more important than just sad – with everyone being mean to one another and then dying. The play was also very embarrassing if you happened to be playing Antigone and you had accidentally chosen Wolf Reed to play the part of your beloved, Haemon, who kills himself when he finds you have been sentenced to be buried alive and then killed yourself. But as the children read on, Mrs Beathag Hide seemed happier than ever, listening to the long, impassioned speeches, in which Antigone begs for her brother’s body to be given a proper burial, and then Haemon begs for Antigone to be spared . . .

Until the door started to open. It was Euphemia Truelove. She was over an hour late.

The door creaked loudly as Effie opened it. Like everything else in the Tusitala School for the Gifted, Troubled and Strange, it was old and needed repair – or at least a good glug of oil. The whole room went silent. Maximilian gulped. Raven sat on her hands, silently, wondering if she had yet become invisible, but suspecting not. Wolf glanced at his watch. If the fuss that was bound to follow lasted long enough he would be spared having to read much more of this depressing play and would be able to think instead about getting ready for P.E. and how he might practise his mental toughness today. Coach Bruce, who trained the Under 13 rugby squad, had recently had a lot to say about Wolf’s mental toughness, not all of it that nice.

The silence was becoming unbearable, although objectively it had only been going on for a few seconds. Then it was broken by a big metallic PLOP, as a drop of water fell in the tin bucket next to Maximilian. Then there was another plop. Then another. Rain. Coming through the ceiling, as usual.

‘Can we help you?’ said Mrs Beathag Hide to Effie.

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ Effie began. ‘I’ve had a bit of . . .’

Suddenly she felt as if she were about to cry. Everyone was looking at her.

‘A bit of . . .?’ prompted Mrs Beathag Hide. ‘Trouble getting out of bed, perhaps?’

‘No, I . . .’ started Effie. But she now realised she didn’t want to say anything about her grandfather in front of the whole class. It felt too private. And there was all that stuff Mrs Beathag Hide was always saying about never complaining or explaining. And anyway, if something like this happened you were supposed to bring in a letter from a parent, and Effie had no letter. ‘Well, actually . . . Yes. Sorry. I slept in.’

‘Do you not have an ALARM CLOCK?’

‘Yes, I do, but— ’

‘Perhaps it broke?’

‘Yes, I think maybe it needs new batteries.’

‘Interesting. But we heard a different story, didn’t we, class?’

The class froze. Was it meant to speak back? But Mrs Beathag Hide carried on.

‘We heard of a SICK grandparent.’

Maximilian gasped. Oh no! This was his fault.

‘It’s amazing how many grandparents some children go through. At my last school one wretched child had SEVENTEEN. Another one died every time there was homework due. Think about it, class. SEVENTEEN.’

Everyone tried to think about this, except for Raven, who was attempting to cast her invisibility spell on Effie, and Wolf, who was wondering how anyone could stay mentally tough in this situation.

‘Which,’ Mrs Beathag Hide went on, ‘I think you’ll agree, adds up to at least THIRTEEN betrayals of the truth. Or, in other words, LIES.’

Effie was looking at the floor. Her eyes were filling with tears. What if she just broke down and sobbed in front of the whole class? Her life would essentially be over. She reached into her pocket and felt for her grandfather’s silver ring. Touching it made her feel a bit better. Stronger. She slipped it on her left thumb. It gave her a warm feeling, like eating a big bowl of porridge on a winter’s morning.

There was another big PLOP in the tin bucket.

‘Well?’ said Mrs Beathag Hide.

‘Stop it,’ Maximilian found himself saying, suddenly. It came out as a sort of loud whisper, but somehow saying the words made him feel better, so he said them again, this time more loudly. ‘Stop it.’

The words echoed around the room. Someone had dared to speak. It was the pathetic boy. The dunce. The Bottom of the Class.

Mrs Beathag Hide turned slowly to face him. Effie quickly found her seat, and tried to make herself as small and inconspicuous as possible.

Poor Maximilian was trembling as Mrs Beathag Hide approached him.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Well, well. What do we have here? Haemon in a dunce’s hat, begging me to spare his Antigone. Speaking up for your little friend. Maybe your girlfriend.’ She frowned. ‘Such loyalty. Such fearlessness. And in one so clearly challenged, so socially doomed. I do so admire your bravery. Yes, I do. Enough to give you detention for just ONE DAY rather than a week. And your frightened little love-interest can have the same. You will both report to my office at four o’clock. Maximilian and Euphemia. It sounds almost Shakespearian! O Maximilian, Maximilian . . . Well, I’ll lock you in a broom cupboard together for a while, and we’ll see how this tragic romance blossoms.’

Somewhere in a dark corridor the elderly headmaster weakly rang the bell that meant it was – at long last – the end of this period. Everyone, with the possible exception of Effie, left the room feeling they had learnt something, almost, but probably not in the way the government and other adults hoped you would learn things at school. Effie looked around for Maximilian to thank him, but he had gone off in an embarrassed daze towards the changing rooms to get ready for double P.E. He had never had a detention before. He was very faintly excited about it.

Wolf Reed loved playing rugby. The feel of the ball under his arm or in his hands. Running fast, kicking, swallow-diving. Rugby was the only thing he really enjoyed in his life. Well, he also quite enjoyed other sports, but Coach Bruce always said that all other sports are simply preparation for rugby.

The thing Wolf loved most of all was passing the ball hard, making it spin in the air as it rushed towards its target, before . . .

THWACK.

Maximilian fell over in the mud. Again.

Mr Peters, the Head of P.E., blew his whistle.

‘REED!’ he said, for the third time. ‘I am warning you.’

‘What, sir?’

Maximilian had been put on Wolf’s team precisely because if he was on the other team, Wolf would come close to killing him with tackles that almost certainly weren’t allowed at this level of junior rugby. To be fair, this wasn’t in the least bit personal. It was bound to happen, given that Wolf was the best rugby player in the form and Maximilian was the worst. So Mr Peters had put them on the same team with the result that Wolf threw the ball so hard at his team-mate that he was knocked over.

‘It’s all right, sir,’ said Maximilian, cleaning mud off his glasses. ‘Really.’

But five minutes later the whole thing happened again.

‘Right!’ said Mr Peters. ‘Both of you. Inside. You can play tennis. I’ve had enough of this.’

‘But Sir!’ pleaded Wolf. ‘This is so unfair.’ He mumbled a few choice words.

‘Go. Now. And you . . .’ He pointed at Wolf. ‘Detention. We don’t have swearing on the rugby pitch.’

Which was actually a complete lie, given that all sports pitches throughout the land were sworn on a great deal by everyone from children to their parents to professional sports teams. But still, rules were rules.

Something strange was happening in the indoor tennis centre, which wasn’t exactly unusual – the indoor tennis centre was a peculiar place at the best of times – but this thing was strange enough that it had attracted the attention of Coach Bruce.

Coach Bruce was in the tennis centre for roughly the same reason that Wolf was (or almost was; at this point he and Maximilian were silently trudging through the rain across the back sports field, which was currently full of annoyed-looking alpaca from some city farm project). Both Coach Bruce and Wolf Reed took rugby Way Too Seriously for Mr Peters’s liking. If they were allowed out there on the rugby field together, coach and star player, then Maximilian, and other small, slow-moving or otherwise vulnerable children, would almost certainly be maimed or killed. Official Under 13 practices were one thing. Mr Peters didn’t care who got killed in official Under 13 rugby practices. It was his job to care only if someone got killed in a P.E. lesson.

The indoor tennis centre had been built with money sent from a boy who had been at the Tusitala School for the Gifted, Troubled and Strange a long time ago and then gone on to become a famous tennis player. His family sent enough money to build the centre, but not to maintain it, so it was now as rundown as the rest of the school. Its flickering orange lighting gave some of the children headaches, and Court Three was haunted. The storeroom was full of old, dead tennis balls, and a broken ball machine covered with several layers of green fuzz. It had a large metallic garage-style door that functioned a bit like a guillotine, and could drop without warning at any time. If Coach Bruce had to go into the office for some reason, the children would dare each other to walk underneath the guillotine. If it came down while you were underneath it, you might die. And if it came down with you inside the cupboard, you might be left there for ever to rot. It was quite a stressful game, but also fun.

Anyway, there was a strange thing happening in the indoor tennis centre that had never happened before.

Euphemia Truelove, the dreamy girl who, despite being reserve Wing Attack in the Under 12 netball team, had never quite set the sporting world alight, was suddenly playing tennis like some sort of professional. She had beaten all the girls in the form and was now working her way through all the boys. She looked faintly surprised by this, but also as if she were quite enjoying it.

Coach Bruce suspected foul play – possibly doping, which he took very seriously – but why would an unprepossessing eleven-year-old girl take performance-enhancing drugs before a random P.E. lesson on a wet afternoon in October? It didn’t make any sense. Coach Bruce put another boy on against her, but he ended up almost crying when Effie hit a forehand so hard the ball left a bruise on his shin.

‘I’m not playing against her, Sir,’ he said. ‘She’s gone mental.’

Which was when Maximilian and Wolf came in. Wet, and still a bit annoyed.

‘Aha,’ said Coach Bruce when he saw Wolf. ‘Good.’

Maximilian was given a doubles partner and went off to play on Court One. Most of the other children were given a complex drill to complete on Court Two. And on Court Three . . .

‘Right,’ said Coach Bruce. ‘Let’s see what happens now.’

He put Wolf Reed on to play with Effie. Normally Wolf Reed wasn’t allowed anywhere near girls, even quite tough girls, and even in sports where boys and girls could play together. He frightened all the boys, let alone the girls. But this girl needed to be beaten (or else she might get quite a big head) and Wolf Reed was the only person likely to do it. Wolf Reed wasn’t as good at tennis as he was at rugby, but he was still the best boy in the first form, and probably in the whole Lower School.

What happened next was probably not helped by the fact that they were playing on the haunted court. Both Wolf and Effie developed a strange, ethereal green glow around them as they held up their rackets, which, from a distance, seemed like great ancient weapons.

To Maximilian, the whole thing looked oddly like some long-ago encounter between two soldiers, warriors or heroes. It was perplexing, and sort of beautiful. The ghostly aura around Court Three made it seem like a misty battlefield at dawn, with these two great fighters practising their moves. Effie’s forehand had become like the great slap of a giantess, and Wolf’s whole game looked like something from a cosmic boxing ring. Something very strange had happened, and no one knew exactly what it was. But everyone watched, awed and amazed, as a girl who wasn’t usually that good at sports beat Wolf Reed at tennis.

Afterwards, Coach Bruce came up to Effie with a bottle.

‘Pee in this,’ he said. ‘And don’t get a friend to do it.’

Coach Bruce had a friend in the science department who was an amateur drugs tester and this was how he always made sure his junior athletes were ‘clean’. He now had his eye on Effie for every girls team going, but not if she was on drugs.

This day was getting stranger and stranger.