CHAPTER 19

AT YOUR SERVICE

There was a tangle of legs, a mangle of arms, a wrangle of boy and teacher. Or rather, what seemed to be teacher. The blue blouse, flowery skirt and sensible heels, from which Brian finally managed to escape, certainly suggested Florrie. But he couldn’t be sure because a scarf covered the face.

‘’Emme go!’ it squealed.

Without stopping to think if it was a good idea, Brian leaned over. It took a few moments to undo the knot, thanks to the wriggling head and the wisps of white hair caught in the scarf. After a lot of yanking and shoving – it wouldn’t be kind to say that part of him enjoyed the ouches and yowches – the scarf came loose.

‘You!’ She blinked at Brian. ‘And YOU!’ She gasped at the others. They looked at her with vague annoyance: the sort of faces Doctor Who fans would make when disturbed from the Christmas special by the arrival of a distant uncle with a box of dried figs.

‘So.’ The teacher glared at Brian. ‘You’re involved with this!’

‘What?’ Brian suddenly regretted untying her hands, which had been bound by rope. ‘Of course I’m not, you idiot.’ He bit his top lip. Did he really just say that? Did it really feel so good?

Her eyebrows jiggled in outrage. ‘How dare you–’

‘Shut up!’ That would’ve felt even better if it hadn’t been accompanied by the sound of a key turning. Pushing past her, he grabbed the door handle. ‘No!’ He rattled it uselessly. They were trapped.

He turned back to the teacher. ‘Who brought you here?’ he asked in a flat voice.

‘How should I know?’ she snapped. ‘I couldn’t see a thing. One minute I was locking the staffroom door and the next everything went black.’ She blew her nose on the scarf. ‘Someone grabbed my hands and tied them behind my back. They marched me down the corridor and out the back door. I might’ve been blindfolded, but I know every inch of my school. Then across the garden and through the trees. They pushed me through the back gate and into a car.’

Pausing to wipe her nose on her sleeve (Brian felt a strange satisfaction at the sight of Florrie-snot), she described the rest of the journey: the car stopping; the door opening; the squelch across muddy ground; the smell of wet woodland; the stumble and tumble into this room.

‘Did you hear his voice?’ he said.

‘Once or twice. “Hurry up, turn left,” that sort of thing.’ She sniffed. ‘And it was high and squeaky. I think it was a she.’

‘Or a he in disguise.’

Before Florrie could disagree, a voice sang, ‘A he in disguise or a she in disguise? Hee hee, yippee – a me in disguise!’

The door flew open once more, whacking into Brian. It was his turn to fall on Florrie. Untangling themselves, they wriggled backwards on their bottoms, staring at the figure who’d come in and was locking the door behind him. He slipped the bunch of keys into his anorak pocket.

‘YOU!’ Florrie shrieked again. As president of Tullybun’s NUASWIALOWD (Never Use a Short Word if a Long One Will Do) Society, she was really letting herself down. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘You?’ said Mr Pottigrew, staring at Brian. ‘So you’re the one who left the trap door open.’

‘You,’ echoed Brian, because he could think of absolutely nothing else to say.

‘Me,’ agreed the gardener. ‘And not me!’ He grabbed his beard with one hand and his hair with another. Ripping them off, he threw them across the room. They snagged on the cactus and sat there like vicious candy floss.

‘Shot,’ said Pete sitting up on the floor. Alec and Tracy clapped from their desks, completely unruffled by the transformation taking place.

The old man in the doorway was shedding years by the second. Underneath the wig his hair was the colour of earwax. He wiped his face briskly with his hands. Wrinkles disappeared, revealing a sharp, pale face. He straightened his back. With a grin and a giggle, the crumbly old gardener was turning into a firm young man. Only his eyes stayed the same, darting from Brian to Florrie in bright blue delight.

The teacher had gone as white as a duck egg. ‘YOU!’ she gasped – for which she really deserved to be stripped of the NUASWIALOWD presidency. ‘I thought there was something familiar about you.’

‘But you didn’t think hard enough.’ The old-young man’s voice was indeed high and squeaky. ‘All those months of weeding and grovelling, and you didn’t recognise your star pupil. Oh dear, Mrs F.’ He shook his head sadly. Then he shot forward and shrieked in her face, ‘FAIL!’

The teacher yelped. She tried to stand up but he clamped his hands on her shoulders. Brian scrambled to his feet, looking frantically at the other children. Alec was sucking his pen. Tracy was cleaning a fingernail with the corner of a card. Pete doodled on the floor. They seemed amazingly unamazed.

‘Who …’ Brian chased the questions playing pinball round his head, ‘who are you?’

The man, whose quick, easy movements put him in his mid-twenties, gave a deep bow. ‘Quincy Queaze, at your service.’

Somehow Brian doubted that. His mouth opened and closed.

‘No need for small talk.’ With one hand still grasping Florrie’s shoulder, Quincy waved the other breezily. ‘I know all about you, Brian O’Bunion. I’ve been watching you over the year. And it’s a lovely surprise to find you here.’

Brian wished he could agree. His eyes strayed to the locked door.

‘Who’d have thought? Of all the people to find me out!’ Quincy squeezed Florrie’s shoulder until his knuckles went white. ‘Pretty smart, hey, Teach? Especially for a lazy loser.’

‘Get your hands off me!’ She tried to wriggle free.

He grabbed her wrists. ‘You see, Brian,’ he said pleasantly, dragging her across the floor to the front desk, ‘no one’s more welcome than you to my party.’ He pulled out a chair behind the desk. ‘I know you don’t get many invitations.’ He plonked the teacher roughly onto the chair and whipped out two pairs of handcuffs from his anorak pocket. ‘And I know you’ve had a tough time at school.’ He handcuffed Mrs Florris’s wrists to the arms of the chair. ‘Believe me, Brian, I understand, because I did too.’ He grabbed her neck in the crook of his elbow. ‘Didn’t I, Teach?’

She tried to duck out of his grip. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

He clenched her more tightly. ‘Oh, I think you do.’

Brian stared at the principal. Her face was going alarmingly red. He really ought to think carefully about seriously considering the different options for perhaps doing something that could possibly help her. But oh dear, not a single option came into his head.

He rubbed his ear. If Dulcie had any ideas, she wasn’t prepared to share them, because there still wasn’t a peep.

What about his classmates? They didn’t look promising. If their expressions were bedclothes, they’d be thin sheets of curiosity over thick duvets of boredom.

Brian had just got past thinking carefully, and was beginning to seriously consider, when Quincy let go of the teacher.

She sat upright in the chair, wriggling her arms. ‘This is outrageous!’

‘Ooh.’ Quincy clapped his hands like an excited toddler. ‘Isn’t it?’ He took a bag from his pocket and put it on the front desk.

Not a bag, thought Brian, staring at the green cloth tube with a zip along the top. A pencil case.

‘Let me go!’ snarled Florrie.

Quincy stuck out his tongue. ‘Not on your smelly old nelly.’ He unzipped the case and took out a metal ruler. ‘I do love stationery,’ he sighed. ‘So useful and fun. The only fun thing about school. You see, Brian –’ he waved the ruler in the air, ‘I had the same problem as you.’ As if a switch had flipped, his face squashed with hatred. ‘The teacher!’ He tapped Florrie’s head with the ruler. ‘She really wasn’t kind to me.’ His eyes widened to sorrowful pools. Like an actor, he seemed to have a wardrobe of faces inside him. ‘She was always banging on about how stupid I was. Putting flowerpots on my head to show everyone I was thicker than clay. Calling me Loser, Waster, Fool of the School.’

‘That’s because you were,’ she muttered.

He patted her head with the ruler. ‘Fifteen years ago, Brian, I too won a prize. The Melon for Mindless Morons.’ Quincy jabbed the ruler in Florrie’s chest. ‘Remember?’

‘Yes, I do.’ She glared at him. ‘And you deserved every pip.’

‘Oh, did I?’ He gave what Brian guessed was a laugh, though it sounded more like a lady machine gun. ‘We’ll see about that, you old scorpion.’ Quincy rapped the ruler on the desk. ‘Ready folks?’

Pete wiped chalk dust from his hands. ‘Yeah.’ Stifling a yawn, he pointed to the double white lines that ran round the edge of the floor.

‘Excellent,’ said Quincy. ‘Tracy?’

She nodded listlessly.

‘Good. And Alec?’

‘Yep.’ He put his pen down. ‘Hurry up, Quince. I’m staaarving.’

Quince? Brian gaped at the three dozy children who didn’t seem the slightest bit scared of this yo-yo of a man whose moods changed like the Irish weather.

‘Alec!’ barked Florrie. ‘Tracy, Pete – what’s wrong with you? I order you to help me!’

Her prize pupils gazed back, their faces blank as baps.

‘Ooh, bossy bossy.’ Quincy’s eyebrows rose. ‘But I give the orders round here.’ He bent down and pinched her chin between his finger and thumb. ‘Because I’m the teacher now. And I’m going to teach you,’ he poked her nose, ‘a lesson you’ll remember,’ poke poke, ‘all your life,’ poke poke poke.

‘You don’t scare me,’ she growled.

Brian had to hand it to her. For someone forced to sit, she was standing up to him impressively.

‘Oh, don’t I?’ He prodded her cheek with the ruler. She pressed her lips together and sniffed furiously.

Brian rubbed his ear a third time. ‘Dulcie!’ he hissed. ‘You’ve got to think of something.’

Quincy looked up sharply. ‘What?’

‘I … I said I was just thinking of something.’ Brian smiled nervously.

Quincy chuckled. ‘Well, I’ve been planning something that’ll really make you grin. Oh, I’m so glad you’re here to see it.’ He gazed dreamily over Florrie’s head, like Dorothy over the rainbow. ‘I know you’ll enjoy it, Brian. Just like you’re enjoying this.’ He tickled the teacher’s neck with the ruler.

She blinked at Brian. And with a sweet-and-sour rush, he realised that Quincy was right. He was enjoying this reversal of power, this bullying of the bully. That was why he hadn’t rushed over to kick Quincy’s shins and bite his arms, to scratch and pinch and do all he could to help Florrie.

For a moment Brian forgot that he was imprisoned underground, that his classmates had been duped or doped, that his teacher was handcuffed to a chair and that he was the only one who could help them. For a moment he watched enthralled as the failure-hating principal’s effort to stop a tear rolling down her cheek scored a big, fat … F.